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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



POETRY 



FOR 



HOME AND SCHOOL. 



PART SECOND. 



POETRY 



FOR 



HOME AND SCHOOL. 



PART SECOND. 



SELECTED BY THE AUTHOR OF "THEORY OF TEACHING, 
AND "FIRST LESSONS IN GRAMMAR." 



. 



V 

BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY S. G. SIMPKINS. 

1846. 



1* 



^ 



v^ 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1845, by 

S. G. Simp kins, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



did 



CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

METCALF AND COMPANY, 

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



CONTENTS 



Some murmur, when their sky is clear JR. C. Trench. 

Weep not for broad lands lost . . . R. C. Trench. 

Sundays Henry Vaughan 

The Boy of Egremond Rogers. . . 

Life and Death R. C. Trench. 

By Grecian annals it remained untold R. C. Trench. 

Fourth Sunday after Trinity . . . Keble. . . . 

Is there, for honest poverty .... Burns. . . 

The Greenwood Shrift Blackwood's 

Mutability Shelley. . . 

To the Moon Shelley. . . 

Of a Contented Mind 

The Friar of Orders Gray .... Percy. . . . 

Sonnet on his Blindness Milton. . . 

To the Memory of Isabel Southey . Mrs. Southey. 

Employment George Herbert 

The Isles of Greece Byron. . . 

Expostulation and Reply .... Wordsworth. 

The Tables turned Wordsworth. 

Manhood C. A. Dana. . 

The Cloud Shelley. . . 



PAGE 

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VI CONTENTS. 

Break, break, break Tennyson. . . 34 

Man was made to mourn .... Burns. ... 34 

The Marigold George Wither. 37 

Sonnet W. E. Channing. 38 

Life Henry King. . 39 

Sin Herbert. ... 39 

Sonnet Henry Alford. . 40 

Labor Robert Milnes. . 40 

Alms-giving Robert Milnes. . 42 

The Patience of the Poor .... Robert Milnes. . 45 

Delight in God only Francis Quarles. 48 

Hymn of Apollo Shelley. ... 49 

A genial moment oft has given . . Trench. ... 51 

A dewdrop, falling Trench. ... 51 

The seed must die Trench. ... 52 

The Prioress's Tale Chaucer. ... 52 

Character of the Happy Warrior . . Wordsworth. . 59 

Compensation Trench. ... 61 

Sonnet Trench. ... 62 

Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of 

Chamouni Coleridge. . . 63 

The Praise of Men Trench. ... 65 

Couplets Trench. ... 66 

Intimations of Immortality from Rec- 
ollections of Early Childhood . . Wordsworth. . 69 

Sonnet Wordsworth. . 76 

Messiah Pope 76 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere .... Tennyson. . . 80 

Trial before Reward Francis Quarles. 82 

The Bard Gray 83 

Sleep Miss Barrett. . 89 

Providence Herbert. ... 91 

Arethusa Shelley. ... 93 



CONTENTS. 



Vll 



The Cotter's Saturday Night . . . 

Disdain returned 

Lake, with lawny banks that slope . 
Deep, deep within the ocean's breast 

Isabel 

Sunday , 

Hymn of Pan 

L'Allegro 

II Penseroso 

Why thus longing? 

Vanity 

The Cloud 

The Dryads 

Man 

To a Skylark 

The Prisoner of Chillon .... 

Sonnet 

The Ancient Mariner . . . . , 
Mirabeau 



Burns. 
Carew. 



Tennyson. 

Herbert. 

Shelley. 

Milton. 

Milton. 

Miss Winslow. 

Herbert. 

heigh Hunt. 

Leigh Hunt. 

Herbert. 

Shelley. 

Byron. 

J. Blanco White. 

Coleridge. 

Sterling. 



96 
102 
103 
105 
106 
J 08 
109 
110 
114 
1*20 
121 
122 
123 
125 
127 
130 
143 
143 
165 



POETRY 

FOR 

HOME AND SCHOOL. 

PART II. 



SOME MURMUR, WHEN THEIR SKY IS CLEAR. 
R. C. Trench. 

Some murmur, when their sky is clear 

And wholly bright to view, 
If one small speck of dark appear 

In their great heaven of blue ; 
And some with thankful love are filled, 

If but one streak of light, 
One ray of God's good mercy, gild 

The darkness of their night. 

In palaces are hearts that ask, 

In discontent and pride, 
Why life is such a dreary task, 

And all good things denied ; 
And hearts in poorest huts admire 

How Love has in their aid 
(Love that not ever seems to tire) 

Such rich provision made. 



WEEP NOT FOR BROAD LANDS LOST.-/?. C. Trench. 

Weep not for broad lands lost ; 
Weep not for fair hopes crost ; 
1 



SUNDAYS. 

Weep not when limbs wax old ; 
Weep not when friends grow cold ; 
Weep not that Death must part 
Thine and the best loved heart ; 

Yet weep, weep all thou can, — 
Weep, weep, because thou art 

A sin-defiled man. 



SUNDAYS. — Henry Vaughan. 

Bright shadows of true rest ! some shoots of bliss ; 

Heaven once a week ; 
The next world's gladness prepossessed in this ; 

A day to seek ; 
Eternity in time ; the steps by which 

We climb above all ages ; lamps that light 
Man through his heap of dark days ; and the rich 
And full redemption of the whole week's flight ; 
The pulleys unto headlong man ; time's bower ; 

The narrow way ; 
Transplanted paradise ; God's walking hour ; 

The cool o' th' day ; 
The creature's jubilee ; God's parle with dust ; 
Heaven here ; man on those hills of myrrh and 
flowers ; 
Angels descending ; the returns of trust ; 

A gleam of glory after six days' showers ; 
The church's love-feasts ; time's prerogative 

And interest, 
Deducted from the whole ; the combs and hive, 

And home of rest ; 
The milky way chalked out with suns ; a clue 

That guides through erring hours, and in full story 
A taste of heaven on earth ; the pledge and cue 
Of a full feast, and the out-courts of glory. 



THE BOY OF EGREMOND. 3 



THE BOY OF EGREMOND* — Rogers. 

" Say, what remains when hope is fled ? " 
She answered, u Endless weeping ! " 
For in the herdsman's eye she read 
Who in his shroud lay sleeping. 

At Embsay rung the matin-bell, 
The stag was roused on Barden-fell ; 
The mingled sounds were swelling, dying, 
And down the Wharfe a hern was flying ; 
When near the cabin in the wood, 
In tartan clad and forest-green, 
With hound in leash and hawk in hood, 
The Boy of Egremond was seen. 
Blithe was his song, a song of yore ; 
But where the rock is rent in two, 
And the river rushes through, 
His voice was heard no more ! 
'T was but a step ! the gulf he past ; 
But that step, — it was his last ! 
As through the mist he winged his way 
(A cloud that hovers night and day), 
The hound hung back, and back he drew 
The master and his merlin too. 



* In the twelfth century, William Fitz-Duncan laid waste 
the valleys of Craven with fire and sword, and was after- 
wards established there by his uncle, David of Scotland. 

He was the last of the race ; his son, commonly called the 
Boy of Egremond, dying before him in the manner here re- 
lated ; when a priory was removed from Embsay to Bolton, 
that it might be as near as possible to the place where the 
accident happened. That place is still known by the name 
of the Strid ; and the mother's answer, as given in the first 
stanza, is to this day often repeated in Wharfedale. See 
Whitaker's History of Craven. 



LIFE AND DEATH. 

That narrow place of noise and strife 
Received their little all of life ! 

There now the matin-bell is rung ; 
The " Miserere ! " duly sung ; 
And holy men in cowl and hood 
Are wandering up and down the wood. 
But what avail they ? Ruthless Lord, 
Thou didst not shudder when the sword 
Here on the young its fury spent, 
The helpless and the innocent. 
Sit now and answer groan for groan ; 
The child before thee is thy own. 
And she who wildly wanders there, 
The mother in her long despair, 
Shall oft remind thee, waking, sleeping, 
Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping ; 
Of those who would not be consoled, 
When red with blood the river rolled. 



LIFE AND DEATH. — R. C. Trench. 

A PARABLE, FROM THE GERMAN OF RUCKERT. 

There went a man through Syrian land, 

Leading a camel by the hand. 

The beast, made wild by some alarm, 

Began to threaten sudden harm, 

So fiercely snorting, that the man 

With all his speed escaping ran ; — 

He ran, and saw a well that lay, 

As chance would have it, by the way. 

He heard the camel snort so near, 

As almost maddened him with fear, 



LIFE AND DEATH. 

And crawled into the well, — yet there 
Fell not, but dangled in mid air ; 
For from a fissure in the stone, 
Which lined its sides, a bush had grown ; 
To this he clung with all his might, 
From thence lamenting his sad plight. 
He saw, what time he looked on high, 
The beast's head perilously nigh, 
Ready to drag him back again ; 
He looked into the bottom then, 
And there a dragon he espied, 
Whose horrid jaws were yawning wide, 
Agape to swallow him ajive, 
As soon as he should there arrive. 
But as he hung two fears between, 
A third by that poor wretch was seen ; 
For, where the bush by which he clung 
Had from the broken wall outsprung, 
He saw two mice precisely there, 
One black, one white, a stealthy pair ; — 
He saw the black one and the white, 
How at the root by turns they bite, 
They gnaw, they pull, they dig ; and still 
The earth that held its fibres spill, 
Which, as it rustling downward ran, 
The dragon to look up began, 
Watching how soon the shrub and all 
Its burden would together fall. 

The man in anguish, fear, despair, 
Beleaguered, threatened everywhere, 
In state of miserable doubt, 
In vain for safety gazed about. 
But as he looked around him so, 
A twig he spied, and on it grow 



LIFE AND DEATH. 

Ripe berries from their laden stalk ; 

Then his desire he could not balk. 

When these did once his eye engage, 

He saw no more the camel's rage, 

Nor dragon in the underground, 

Nor game the busy mice had found. 

The beast above might snort and blow, 

The Dragon watch his prey below, 

The mice gnaw near him as they pleased, — 

The berries eagerly he seized ; 

They seemed to him right good to eat ; 

A dainty mouthful, welcome treat, 

They brought him such a keen delight, 

His danger was forgotten quite. 

But who, you ask, is this vain man, 

Who thus forget his terror can ? 

Then learn, O friend, that man art thou ! 

Listen and I will tell thee how. 

The dragon in the well beneath, 

That is the yawning gulf of death. 

The camel threatening overhead 

Is life's perplexity and dread. 

'T is thou who, life and death between, 

Hangest on this world's sapling green ; 

And they who gnaw the root, the twain 

Who thee and thy support would fain 

Deliver unto death a prey, — 

These names the mice have, Night and Day. 

From morn to evening gnaws the white, 

And would the root unfasten quite ; 

From evening till the morn comes back, 

In deepest stillness gnaws the black ; 

And yet, in midst of these alarms, 

The berry, Pleasure, has such charms, 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 

That thou, the camel of life's woe, 
That thou^ the dragon death below, 
That thou, the two mice, Night and Day, 
And all forgettest, save the way 
To get most berries in thy power, 
And on the grave's cleft side devour. 



BY GRECIAN ANNALS IT REMAINED UNTOLD.— 
R. C. Trench. 

By Grecian annals it remained untold, 

But may be read in Eastern legend old, 

How, when great Alexander died, he bade 

That his two hands uncovered might be laid 

Outside the bier, for men therewith to see — 

Men who had seen him in his majesty — 

That he had gone the common way of all, 

And nothing now his own in death might call ; 

Nor of the treasures of two empires aught 

Within those empty hands unto the grave had brought. 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. — Keble. 

It was not, then, a poet's dream, 

An idle vaunt of song, 
Such as beneath the moon's soft gleam 

On vacant fancies throng, 

Which bids us see in heaven and earth, 

In all fair things around, 
Strong yearnings for a blest new birth 

With sinless glories crowned ; 



8 FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 

Which bids us hear, at each sweet pause 
From care and want and toil* 

When dewy eve her curtain draws 
Over the day's turmoil, 

In the low chant of wakeful birds, 

In the deep weltering flood, 
In whispering leaves, these solemn words, 

" God made us all for good." 

All true, all faultless, all in tune, 

Creation's wondrous choir 
Opened in mystic unison, 

To last till time expire. 

And still it lasts : by day and night, 

With one consenting voice, 
All hymn thy glory, Lord, aright, 

All worship and rejoice ! 

Man only mars the sweet accord, 
O'erpowering with " harsh din " 

The music of thy works and word, 
111 matched with grief and sin. 

Sin is with man at morning break, 
And through the livelong day 

Deafens the ear that fain would wake 
To Nature's simple lay. 

But when eve's silent footfall steals 

Along the eastern sky, . 
And one by one to earth reveals 

Those purer fires on high, — 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 9 

When one by one each human sound 

Dies on the awful ear, 
Then Nature's voice no more is drowned, 

She speaks, and we must hear. 

Then pours she on the Christian heart 

That warning still and deep, 
At which high spirits of old would start 

E'en from their pagan sleep, 

Just guessing, through their murky blind, 

Few, faint, and baffling sight, 
Streaks of a brighter heaven behind 

A cloudless depth of light. 

Such thoughts, the wreck of Paradise, 

Through many a dreary age, 
Upbore whate'er of good and wise 

Yet lived in bard or sage : 

They marked what agonizing throes 
Shook the great mother's womb ; — 

But Reason's spells might not disclose 
The gracious birth to come ; 

Nor could the enchantress Hope forecast 

God's secret love and power ; 
The travail-pangs of Earth must last 

Till her appointed hour ; 

The hour that saw from opening heaven 

Redeeming glory stream, 
Beyond the summer hues of even, 

Beyond the mid-day beam. 



10 



FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 

Thenceforth, to eyes of high desire, 

The meanest things helow, 
As with a seraph's robe of fire 

Invested, burn and glow : 

The rod of heaven has touched them all, 
The word from heaven is spoken : 

" Rise, shine, and sing, thou captive thrall ! 
Are not thy fetters broken ? 

" The God who hallowed thee, and blest, 

Pronouncing thee all good, — 
Hath He not all thy wrongs redrest, 

And all thy bliss renewed ? 

" Why mourn'st thou still as one bereft, 

Now that th' eternal Son 
His blessed home in heaven hath left 

To make thee all his own ? " 

Thou mourn'st because sin lingers still 
In Christ's new heaven and earth ; 

Because our rebel works and will 
Stain our immortal birth ; 

Because, as Love and Prayer grow cold, 

The Saviour hides his face, 
And worldlings blot the temple's gold 

With uses vile and base. 

Hence all thy groans and travail-pains ; 

Hence, till thy God return, 
In Wisdom's ear thy blithest strains, 

O Nature, seem to mourn ! 



IS THERE, FOR HONEST POVERTY. 11 



IS THERE, FOR HONEST POVERTY. — Burns. 

Is there, for honest poverty, 

That hangs his head, and a' that ? 
The coward-slave, we pass him by, 

We dare be poor for a' that ! 
For a' that, and a' that, 

Our toil 's obscure, and a' that ; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 

The man 's the gowd for a' that ! 

What tho' on hamely fare we dine, 

Wear hoddin gray, and a' that ; 
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 

A man 's a man, for a' that ! 
For a' that, and a' that, 

Their tinsel show, and a' that, 
The honest man, though e'er sae poor, 

Is king o' men for a' that ! 

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, 

Wha struts, and stares, and a' that ; 
Though hundreds worship at his word, 

He 's but a coof for a' that ! 
For a' that, and a' that, 

His riband, star, and a' that, 
The man of independent mind, 

He looks and laughs at a' that ! 

A king can mak' a belted knight, 

A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
But an honest man 's aboon his might, 

Guid faith he mauna fa' that ! 



12 THE GREENWOOD SHRIFT. 

For a' that, and a' that, 

Their dignities, and a' that, 

The pith o' sense and pride o' worth 
Are higher ranks than a' that. 

Then let us pray that come it may. — 

As come it will for a' that, — 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 

May bear the gree, and a' that ! 
For a' that, and a' that, 

It 's comin' yet, for a' that, 
That man to man, the warld o'er, 

Shall brothers be for a' that ! 



THE GREENWOOD SHRIFT. — Blackwood's Magazine. 

Outstretched beneath the leafy shade 
Of Windsor Forest's deepest glade 

A dying woman lay ; 
Three little children round her stood, 
And there went up from the greenwood 

A woful wail that day. 

" O mother ! " was the mingled cry, 
" O mother ! mother ! do not die 

And leave us all alone." 
"My blessed babes ! " she tried to say, 
But the faint accents died away 

In a low sobbing moan. 

And then life struggled hard with death, 
And fast and strong she drew her breath, 
And up she raised her head ; 



THE GREENWOOD SHRIFT. 13 

And peering through the deep wood's maze 
With a long, sharp, unearthly gaze, 
" Will he not come ? " she said. 

Just then, the parting boughs between, 
A little maid's light form was seen, 

All breathless with her speed ; 
And following close, a man came on 
(A portly man to look upon), 

Who led a panting steed. 

" Mother ! " the little maiden cried, 
Or e'er she reached the woman's side, 

And kissed her clay-cold cheek, 
" I have not idled in the town, 
But long went wandering up and down, 

The minister to seek. 

" They told me here, — they told me there, 
I think they mocked me everywhere ; 

And when I found his home, 
And begged him on my bended knee 
To bring his book, and come with me, 

Mother ! he would not come. 

" I told him how you dying lay, 
And could not go in peace away 

Without the minister ; 
I begged him, for dear Christ his sake, 
But O ! — my heart was fit to break, — 

Mother ! he would not stir. 

" So, though my tears were blinding me, 
I ran back fast as fast could be, 

To come again to you ; 
And here — close by — this squire I met, 
Who asked (so mild !) what made me fret; 

And when I told him true, 



14 THE GREENWOOD SHRIFT. 

" c I will go with you, child,' he said, 
1 God sends me to this dying bed.' 

Mother, he 's here, hard by.'" 
While thus the little maiden spoke, 
The man, his back against an oak, 

Looked on with glistening eye. 



The bridle on his neck flung free, 

With quivering flank and trembling knee, 

Pressed close his bonny bay ; 
A statelier man, a statelier steed, 
Never on greensward paced, I rede, 

Than those stood there that day. 

So while the little maiden spoke 
The man, his back against an oak, 

Looked on with glistening eye 
And folded arms ; and in his look, 
Something that, like a sermon book, 

Preached, — " All is vanity ." 

But when the dying woman's face 
Turned toward him with a wishful gaze, 

He stepped to where she lay ; 
And kneeling down, bent over her, 
Saying, — "I am a minister, — 

My sister ! let us pray." 



And well, withouten book or stole 
(God's words were printed on his soul), 

Into the dying ear 
He breathed, as 't were an angel's strain, 
The things that unto life pertain, 

And death's dark shadows clear. 



THE GREENWOOD SHRIFT. 15 

He spoke of sinners' lost estate, 
In Christ renewed, regenerate, — 

Of God's most blest decree,. 
That not a single soul should die 
Who turns repentant with the cry, 

" Be merciful to me ! " 



He spoke of trouble, pain, and toil, 
Endured but for a little while 

In patience, faith, and love, — 
Sure, in God's own good time, to be 
Exchanged for an eternity 

Of happiness above. 

Then, as the spirit ebbed away, 

He raised his hands and eyes, to pray 

That peaceful it might pass ; 
And then — the orphans' sobs alone 
Were heard, as they knelt every one 

Close round on the green grass. 

Such was the sight their wondering eyes 
Beheld, in heart-struck, mute surprise, 

Who reined their coursers back, 
Just as they found the long astray, 
Who, in the heat of chase that day, 

Had wandered from their track. 

Back each man reined his pawing steed, 
And lighted down, as if agreed, 

In silence at his side ; 
And there, uncovered all, they stood ; — 
It was a wholesome sight, and good, 

That day for mortal pride. 



16 



MUTABILITY. 



For of the noblest of the land 

Was that deep-hushed, bareheaded band ; 

And central in the ring, 
By that dead pauper on the ground, 
Her ragged orphans clinging round, 

Knelt their anointed king.* 



MUTABILITY. — Shelley. 

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ; 

How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, 
Streaking the darkness radiantly ! — yet soon 

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever ; 

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings 
Give various response to each varying blast, 

To whose frail frame no second motion brings 
One mood or modulation like the last. 

We rest, — a dream has power to poison sleep ; 

We rise, — one wandering thought pollutes the day ; 
We feel, conceive, or reason, laugh or weep, 

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away ; 

It is the same ! — for, be it joy or sorrow, 
The path of its departure still is free ; 

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow ; 
Naught may endure but Mutability. 



George the Third of England. 



OF A CONTENTED MIND. 17 



TO THE MOON. — Shelley. 

Art thou pale for weariness 
Of elimbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, 

Wandering companionless 
Among the stars that have a different birth, — 
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye 
That finds no object worth its constancy ? 



OF A CONTENTED MIND. 

When all is done and said, 

In th' end thus shall you find : 
He most of all doth bathe in bliss, 

That hath a quiet mind ; 
And clear from worldly cares, 

To deem can be content 
The sweetest time in all his life 

In thinking to be spent. 

The body subject is 

To fickle Fortune's power, 
And to a million of mishaps 

Is casual every hour ; 
And death in time doth change 

It to a clod of clay ; 
Whereas the mind, which is divine, 

Runs never to decay. 

Companion none is like 

Unto the mind alone ; 
For many have been harmed by speech, 

Through thinking, few or none. 
2 



18 



THE FRIAR OF ORDERS GRAY. 

Fear oftentimes restraineth words, 
But makes not thoughts to cease ; 

And he speaks best, that hath the skill 
When for to hold his peace. 

Our wealth leaves us at death ; 

Our kinsmen at the grave ; 
But virtues of the mind unto 

The heavens with us we have. 
Wherefore, for virtue's sake 

I can be well content 
The sweetest time of all my life 

To deem in thinking spent. 



— ♦- 



THE FRIAR OF ORDERS GRAY. — Percy. 

It was a friar of orders gray 

Walked forth to tell his beads, 
And he met with a lady fair, 

Clad in a pilgrim's weeds. 

" Now Christ thee save, thou reverend friar ! 

I pray thee tell to me, 
If ever at yon holy shrine 

My truelove you did see." 

" And how should I your truelove know 

From many another one ? " 
" O, by his cockle hat and staff, 

And by his sandal shoon. 

" But chiefly by his face and mien, 

That were so fair to view ; 
His flaxen locks that sweetly curled, 

And eyes of lovely blue." 



THE FRIAR OF ORDERS GRAY. 

" O lady, he is dead and gone, 

Lady, he 's dead and gone ! 
At his head a green grass turf, 

And at his heels a stone. 

" Within these holy cloisters long 

He languished, and he died 
Lamenting of a lady's love, 

And 'plaining of her pride. 

" Here bore him barefaced on his bier 

Six proper youths and tall ; 
And many a tear bedewed his grave 

Within yon kirkyard wall." 

" And art thou dead, thou gentle youth ? 

And art thou dead and gone ? 
And didst thou die for love of me ? 

Break, cruel heart of stone ! " 

" O, weep not, lady, weep not so ! 

Some ghostly comfort seek ; 
Let not vain sorrow rive thy heart, 

Nor tears bedew thy cheek." 

" O, do not, do not, holy friar, 

My sorrow now reprove ! 
For I have lost the sweetest youth 

That e'er won lady's love. 

" And now, alas ! for thy sad loss 
I '11 evermore weep and sigh ; 

For thee I only wished to live, 
For thee I wished to die." 



19 



20 THE FRIAR OF ORDERS GRAY. 

" Weep no more, lady, weep no more ; 

Thy sorrow is in vain ; 
For violets plucked the sweetest showers 

Will ne'er make grow again. 

" Our joys as winged dreams do fly ; 

Why, then, should sorrow last ? 
Since grief but aggravates thy loss, 

Grieve not for what is past." 

" O, say not so, thou holy friar ; 

I pray thee, say not so ! 
For since my truelove died for me, 

'T is meet my tears should flow." 

" Sigh no more, lady, sigh no more, 

Men were deceivers ever ; 
One foot on sea and one on land, 

To one thing constant never." 

" Now say not so, thou holy friar, 

I pray thee, say not so ; 
My love he had the truest heart ; 

O, he was ever true ! 

" And art thou dead, thou much loved youth ? 

And didst thou die for me ? 
Then farewell, home ; for evermore 

A pilgrim I will be. 

" But first upon my truelove's grave 

My weary limbs I '11 lay ; 
And thrice I '11 kiss the green grass turf 

That wraps his breathless clay." 



THE FRIAR OF ORDERS GRAY. 21 

" Yet stay, fair lady, rest awhile 

Beneath this cloister wall ; 
The cold wind through the hawthorn blows. 

And drizzly rain doth fall." 

" O, stay me not, thou holy friar, 

O, stay me not, I pray ! 
No drizzly rain that falls on me 

Can wash my fault away." 

" Yet stay, fair lady, turn again, 

And dry those pearly tears ; 
For see, beneath this gown of gray, 

Thy own truelove appears ! 

" Here, forced by grief and hopeless love, 

These holy weeds I sought, — 
And here, amid these lonely walls, 

To end my days I thought. 

" But haply, — for my year of grace 

Is not yet passed away, — 
Might I still hope to win thy love, 

No longer would I stay." 

" Now farewell grief, and welcome joy 

Once more unto my heart ; 
For since I Ve found thee, lovely youth, 

We never more will part." 



22 



TO THE MEMORY OF ISABEL SOUTHEY. 



SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS. — Milton. 

When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 

And that one talent which is death to hide 

Lodged with me useless (though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

My true account, lest he returning chide), 

" Doth God exact day-labor, light denied ? " 

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, " God doth not need 

Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best : his state 

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, 

And post o'er land and ocean without rest : 

They also serve who only stand and wait." 



TO THE MEMORY OF ISABEL SOUTHEY.— 

Mrs. Southey. 

'T is ever thus, — 't is ever thus, when Hope hath 
built a bower 

Like that of Eden, wreathed about with every thorn- 
less flower, 

To dwell therein securely, the self-deceiver's trust, 

A whirlwind from the desert comes, and " all is in 
the dust." 

'Tis ever thus, — 't is ever thus, that, when the poor 

heart clings 
With all its finest tendrils, with all its flexile rings, 



TO THE MEMORY OF ISABEL SOUTHEY. 



23 



That goodly thing it cleaveth to, so fondly and so fast, 
Is struck to earth by lightning, or shattered by the 
blast. 

'T is ever thus, — 't is ever thus, with beams of mor- 
tal bliss, 

With looks too bright and beautiful for such a world 
as this ; 

One moment round about us their angel lightnings 
play, 

Then down the veil of darkness drops, and all hath 
passed away. 

'T is ever thus, — ' t is ever thus, with sounds too 

sweet for earth, — 
Seraphic sounds, that float away (borne heavenward) 

in their birth ; 
The golden shell is broken, the silver chord is mute, 
The sweet bells all are silent, and hushed the lovely 

lute. 

'T is ever thus, — 't is ever thus, with all that 's best 

below, 
The dearest, noblest, loveliest, are always first to go ; 
The bird that sings the sweetest, the pine that crowns 

the rock, 
The glory of the garden, the flower of the flock. 

'T is ever thus, — 't is ever thus, with creatures 

heavenly fair, 
Too finely framed to 'bide the brunt more earthly 

creatures bear ; 
A little while they dwell with us, blest ministers of 

love, 
Then spread the wings we had not seen, and seek 

their home above. 



24 



EMPLOYMENT. 



EMPLOYMENT.-— George Herbert. 

If, as a flower doth spread and die, 
Thou wouldst extend me to some good, 
Before I were by frost's extremity- 
Nipt in the bud, — 

The sweetness and the praise were thine ; 
But the extension and the room, 
Which in thy garland I should fill, were mine 
At thy great doom. 

For as thou dost impart thy grace, 
The greater shall our glory be. 
The measure of our joys is in this place, 
The stuff with thee. 

Let me not languish, then, and spend 
A life as barren to thy praise 
As is the dust, to which that life doth tend, 
But with delays. 

All things are busy ; only I 
Neither bring honey with the bees, 
Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry 
To water these. 

I am no link of thy great chain, 
But all my company is as a weed. 
Lord, place me in thy concert, give one strain 
To my poor reed. 



THE ISLES OF GREECE. 25 



THE ISLES OF GREECE. — Byron. 

The isles of Greece ! the isles of Greece ! 

Where burning Sappho loved and sung, — 
Where grew the arts of war and peace, — 

Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung ! 
Eternal summer gilds them yet, 
But all, except their sun, is set. 

The Scian and the Teian Muse, 
The hero's harp, the lover's lute, 

Have found the fame your shores refuse ; 
Their place of birth alone is mute 

To sounds which echo farther west 

Than your sires' " Islands of the Blest." 

The mountains look on Marathon, — 
And Marathon looks on the sea ; 

And musing there an hour alone, 

I dreamed that Greece might still be free ; 

For, standing on the Persians' grave, 

I could not deem myself a slave. 

A king sat on the rocky brow 

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ; 

And ships, by thousands, lay below, 
And men in nations ; — all were his ! 

He counted them at break of day, — 

And when the sun set, where were they ? 

And where are they ? and where art thou, 
My country ? On thy voiceless shore 

The heroic lay is tuneless now, — 
The heroic bosom beats no more ! 



26 



THE ISLES OF GREECE. 

And must thy lyre, so long divine, 
Degenerate into hands like mine ? 

'T is something, in the dearth of fame, 
Though linked among a fettered race, 

To feel at least a patriot's shame, 
Even as I sing, suffuse my face ; 

For what is left the poet here ? 

For Greeks a blush, — for Greece a tear. 

Must we but weep o'er days more blest ? 

Must ice but blush ? — Our fathers bled. 
Earth ! render back from out thy breast 

A remnant of our Spartan dead ! 
Of the three hundred grant but three, 
To make a new Thermopylae. 

What, silent still ? and silent all ? 

Ah ! no; — the voices of the dead 
Sound like a distant torrent's fall, 

And answer, " Let one living head, 
But one, arise, — we come, we come ! " 
'T is but the living who are dumb. 

In vain, — in vain ; strike other chords ; 

Fill high the cup with Samian wine ! 
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, 

And shed the blood of Scio's vine ! 
Hark ! rising to the ignoble call, 
How answers each bold bacchanal ! 

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, — 
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? 

Of two such lessons, why forget 
The nobler and the manlier one ? 



THE ISLES OF GREECE. 27 

You have the letters Cadmus gave, — 
Think ye he meant them for a slave ? 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

We will not think of themes like these ! 
It made Anacreon's song divine : 

He served — but served Polycrates — 
A tyrant ; but our masters then 
Were still, at least, our countrymen. 

The tyrant of the Chersonese 

Was freedom's best and bravest friend ; 
That tyrant was Miltiades ! 

O, that the present hour would lend 
Another despot of the kind ! 
Such chains as his were sure to bind. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore, 
Exists the remnant of a line 

Such as the Doric mothers bore ; 
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, 
The Heracleidan blood might own. 

Trust not for freedom to the Franks, — 
They have a king who buys and sells. 

In native swords and native ranks 
The only hope of courage dwells ; 

But Turkish force and Latin fraud 

Would break your shield, however broad. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

Our virgins dance beneath the shade, — 
I see their glorious black eyes shine ; 

But, gazing on each glowing maid, 
My own the burning tear-drop laves, 
To think such breasts must suckle slaves. 



28 



EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY. 

Place me on Samium's marbled steep, — 
Where nothing, save the waves and I, 

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep ; 
There, swan-like, let me sing and die. 

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine, — 

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine ! 



EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY.— Wordsworth, 

" Why, William, on that old gray stone, 

Thus for the length of half a day, 
Why, William, sit you thus alone, 

And dream your time away ? 

" Where are your books ? — that light bequeathed 

To beings else forlorn and blind ! 
Up ! up ! and drink the spirit breathed 

From dead men to their kind. 

" You look round on your mother earth, 
As if she for no purpose bore you ; 

As if you were her first-born birth, 
And none had lived before you ! " 

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake, 
When life. was sweet, I knew not why, 

To me my good friend Matthew spake, 
And thus I made reply : — 

" The eye, — it cannot choose but see ; 

We cannot bid the ear be still ; 
Our bodies feel, where'er they be, 

Against or with our will. 



THE TABLES TURNED. 29 

" Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
Which of themselves our minds impress ; 

That we can feel this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness. 

" Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 

Of things for ever speaking, 
That nothing of itself will come, 

But we must still be seeking ? 

" Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, 

Conversing as I may, 
I sit upon this old gray stone, 

And dream my time away." 



THE TABLES TURNED. — Wordsworth. 

AN EVENING SCENE ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 

Up ! up ! my friend, and quit your books ; 

Or surely you '11 grow double : 
Up ! up ! my friend, and clear your looks ; 

Why all this toil and trouble ? 

The sun, above the mountain's head, 

A freshening lustre mellow 
Through all the long green fields has spread, 

His first sweet evening yellow. 

Books ! 'tis a dull and endless strife : 
Come, hear the woodland linnet, 

How sweet his music ! on my life, 
There 's more of wisdom in it. 



30 



MANHOOD. 

And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings ! 

He, too, is no mean preacher : 
Come forth into the light of things, 

Let Nature be your teacher. 

She has a world of ready wealth, 
Our minds and hearts to bless, — 

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, 
Truth breathed by cheerfulness. 

One impulse from a vernal wood 
May teach you more of man, 

Of moral evil and of good, 
Than all the sages can. 

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ; 

Our meddling intellect 
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things : 

We murder to dissect. 

Enough of Science and of Art ; 

Close up these barren leaves ; 
Come forth, and bring with you a heart 

That watches and receives. 



MANHOOD.— C. A. Dana. 

Dear, noble soul, wisely thy lot thou bearest ; 
For, like a god toiling in earthly slavery, 
Fronting thy sad fate with a joyous bravery, 
Each darker day a sunnier smile thou wearest. 
No grief can touch thy sweet and spiritual smile ; 
No pain is keen enough that it has power 
Over thy childlike love, that all the while 
Upon the cold earth builds its heavenly bower ; — 



THE CLOUD. 31 

And thus with thee bright angels make their dwelling, 
Bringing thee stores of strength when no man know- 

eth ; 
The ocean-stream from God's heart ever swelling, 
That forth through each least thing in Nature goeth, 
In thee, O truest hero, deeper floweth ; — 
With joy I bathe, and many souls beside 
Feel a new life in the celestial tide. 



THE CLOUD.— Shelley. 

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 

From the seas and the streams ; 
I bear light shades for the leaves, when laid 

In their noonday dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet buds every one, 
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 

As she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 

And whiten the green plains under, 
And then again I dissolve in rain, 

And laugh as I pass in thunder. 

I sift the snow on the mountains below, 

And their great pines groan aghast ; 
And all the night 't is my pillow white, 

While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers, 

Lightning my pilot sits ; 
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, — 

It struggles and howls at fits ; 



32 THE CLOUD. 

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, 

This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the love of the genii that move 

In the depths of the purple sea ; 
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, 

Over the lakes and the plains, 
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, 

The spirit he loves remains ; 
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 

Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 

And his burning plumes outspread, 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 

When the morning star shines dead. 
As on the jag of a mountain crag, 

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, 
An eagle alit one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. 
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea be- 
neath, 

Its ardors of rest and of love, 
And the crimson pall of eve may fall 

From the depth of heaven above, 
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, 

As still as a brooding dove. 

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, 

Whom mortals call the moon, 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, 

By the midnight breezes strewn ; 
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 

Which only the angels hear, 
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, 

The stars peep behind her and peer ; 
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, 

Like a swarm of golden bees, 



THE CLOUD. 33 

When I widen the rent in my wind -built tent, 
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, 

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 
Are each paved with the moon and these. 

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, 

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, 

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, 

Over a torrent sea, 
Sunbeam -proof, I hang like a roof, — 

The mountains its columns be. 
The triumphal arch through which I march 

With hurricane, fire, and snow, 
When the powers of air are chained to my chair, 

Is the million-colored bow ; 
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, 

While the moist earth was laughing below. 

I am the daughter of earth and water, 

And the nursling of the sky ; 
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 

I change, but I cannot die. 
For after the rain, when with never a stain 

The pavilion of heaven is bare, 
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex 
gleams, 

Build up the blue dome of air, 
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 

And out of the caverns of rain, 
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the 
tomb, 

I arise and unbuild it again. 
3 



34 MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN. 



BREAK, BREAK, BREAK.— - Tennyson. 

Break, break, break, 

On thy cold, gray stones, O Sea, 
And I would that my tongue could utter 

The thoughts that arise in me. 

O, well for the fisherman's boy 

That he shouts with his sister at play ! 

O, well for the sailor lad 

That he sings in his boat on the bay ! 

And the stately ships go on 

To the haven under the hill ; 
But, O, for the touch of a vanished hand, 

And the sound of a voice that is still ! 

Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea, 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 

Will never come back to me. 



MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN. — Burns. 



A DIRGE. 



When chill November's surly blast 
Made fields and forests bare, 

One evening, as I wandered forth 
Along the banks of Ayr, 



MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN. 35 

I spied a man whose aged step 

Seemed weary, worn with care ; 
His face was furrowed o'er with years, 

And hoary was his hair. 

" Young stranger, whither wanderest thou ? " 

Began the reverend sage ; 
" Does thirst of wealth thy step constrain, 

Or youthful pleasure's rage ? 
Or haply, prest with cares and woes, 

Too soon thou hast began 
To wander forth, with me, to mourn 

The miseries of man. 

14 The sun that overhangs yon moors, 

Outspreading far and wide, 
Where hundreds labor to support 

A haughty lordling's pride, — 
I 've seen yon weary winter-sun 

Twice forty times return, 
And every time has added proofs 

That man was made to mourn. 

44 O man ! while in thy early years, 

How prodigal of time ! 
Misspending all thy precious hours, 

Thy glorious youthful prime ! 
Alternate follies take the sway ; 

Licentious passions burn ; 
Which tenfold force gives Nature's law, 

That man was made to mourn. 

44 Look not alone on youthful prime, 

Or manhood's active might ; 
Man then is useful to his kind, 

Supported is his right : 



36 



MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN. 

But see him on the edge of life, 
With cares and sorrows worn ; 

Then age and want — O ill-matched pair ! 
Show man was made to mourn. 

" A few seem favorites of fate, 

In pleasure's lap carest ; 
Yet, think not all the rich and great 

Are likewise truly blest. 
But, O, what crowds in every land, 

All wretched and forlorn ! 
Through weary life this lesson learn, — 

That man was made to mourn. 

" Many and sharp the numerous ills 

Inwoven with our frame ! 
More pointed still we make ourselves, — 

Regret, remorse, and shame ! 
And man, whose heaven-erected face 

The smiles of love adorn, 
Man's inhumanity to man 

Makes countless thousands mourn ! 

" See yonder poor o'erlabored wight, 

So abject, mean, and vile, 
Who begs a brother of the earth 

To give him leave to toil ; 
And see his lordly fellow-worm 

The poor petition spurn, 
Unmindful though a weeping wife 

And helpless offspring mourn. 

" If I 'm designed yon lordling's slave, — 
By Nature's law designed, — 

Why was an independent wish 
E'er planted in my mind ? 



THE MARIGOLD, 37 

If not, why am I subject to 

His cruelty or scorn ? 
Or why has man the will and power 

To make his fellow mourn ? 

" Yet, let not this too much, my son, 

Disturb thy youthful breast ; 
This partial view of human kind 

Is surely not the best ! 
The poor, oppressed, honest man 

Had never, sure, been born, 
Had there not been some recompense 

To comfort those that mourn ! 

" O Death ! the poor man's dearest friend, — 

The kindest and the best ! 
Welcome the hour my aged limbs 

Are laid with thee at rest ! 
The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow, 

From pomp and pleasure torn ! 
But, O, a blest relief to those 

That weary-laden mourn ! " 



THE MARIGOLD. — George Wither. 

When with a serious musing I behold 

The grateful and obsequious marigold, 

How duly, every morning, she displays 

Her open breast, when Titan spreads his rays ; 

How she observes him in his daily walk, 

Still bending towards him her small, slender stalk ; 

How, when he down declines, she droops and mourns, 

Bedewed as 't were with tears, till he returns ; 



38 



SONNET. 



And how she veils her flowers when he is gone, 
As if she scorned to be looked on 
By an inferior eye, or did contemn 
To wait upon a meaner light than him : — 
When I thus meditate, methinks the flowers 
Have spirits far more generous than ours, 
And give us fair examples, to despise 
The servile fawnings and idolatries 
Wherewith we court these earthly things below, 
Which merit not the service we bestow. 

But, O my God ! though grovelling I appear 
Upon the ground, and have a rooting here, 
Which hauls me downward, yet in my desire 
To that which is above me I aspire, 
And all my best affections I profess 
To Him that is the Sun of Righteousness. 
O, keep the morning of his incarnation, 
The burning noontide of his bitter passion, 
The night of his descending, and the height 
Of his ascension, ever in my sight ; 
That, imitating him in what I may, 
I never follow an inferior way ! 



SONNET.— W. E. Charming. 

Hearts of eternity, — hearts of the deep ! 
Proclaim from land to sea your mighty fate ; 
How that for you no living comes too late ; 
How ye cannot in Theban labyrinth creep ; 
How ye great harvests from small surface reap ; - 
Shout, excellent band, in grand, primeval strain, 
Like midnight winds that foam along the main, 
And do all things rather than pause and weep. 



LIFE. — SIN. 

A human heart knows naught of littleness, 
Suspects no man, compares with no one's ways, 
Hath in one hour most glorious length of days, 
A recompense, a joy, a loveliness ; 
Like eaglet keen, snoots into azure far, 
And, always dwelling nigh, is the remotest star. 



39 



LITE. — Henry King. 

Like to the falling of a star, 
Or as the flights of eagles are, 
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, 
Or silver drops of morning dew, 
Or like a wind that chafes the flood, 
Or bubbles which on water stood, — 
Even such is man, whose borrowed light 
Is straight called in, and paid to-night. 
The wind blows out ; the bubble dies ; 
The spring entombed in autumn lies ; 
The dew dries up ; the star is shot ; 
The flight is past ; and man forgot. 



SIN. — Herbert. 

Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round ! 

Parents first season us ; then schoolmasters 
Deliver us to laws ; they send us bound 

To rules of reason, holy messengers, — 

Pulpits and Sundays ; sorrow dogging sin ; 

Afflictions sorted ; anguish of all sizes ; 
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in ; 

Bibles laid open ; millions of surprises ; 



40 



LABOR. 



Blessings beforehand ; ties of gratefulness ; 

The sound of glory ringing in our ears ; 
Without, our shame ; within, our consciences ; 

Angels and grace ; eternal hopes and fears ; 

Yet all these fences, and their whole array, 
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away. 



SONNET. — Henry Alford. 

Out, palsied soul, that dost but tremble ever 
In sight of the bright sunshine ; — mine be joy, 
And the full heart, and the eye that faileth never 
In the glad morning ! — I am yet a boy ; — 
I have not wandered from the crystal river 
That flowed by me in childhood : my employ 
Hath been to take the gift, and praise the Giver ; 
To love the flowers thy heedless steps destroy. 
I wonder if the bliss that flows to me 
In youth shall be exhaled and scorched up dry 
By the noonday glare of life : I must not lie 
For ever in the shade of childhood's tree : 
But I must venture forth, and make advance 
Along the toiled path of human circumstance. 



LABOR. — Robert Milnes. 



Heart of the people ! working men ! 
Marrow and nerve of human powers ; 
Who on your sturdy backs sustain, 
Through streaming time, this world of ours ; 



LABOR. 41 

Hold by that title, which proclaims 
That ye are undismayed and strong, 
Accomplishing whatever aims 
May to the sons of earth belong. 

Yet not on you alone depend 

These offices, or burdens fall ; 

Labor, for some or other end, 

Is lord and master of us all. 

The high-born youth from downy bed 

Must meet the morn with horse and hound, 

While Industry for daily bread 

Pursues afresh his wonted round. 

With all his pomp of pleasure, he 
Is but your working comrade now, 
And snouts and winds his horn as ye 
Might whistle by the loom or plough ; 
In vain for him has wealth the use 
Of warm repose and careless joy, — 
When, as ye labor to produce, 
He strives, as active to destroy. 

But who is this with wasted frame, 
Sad sign of vigor overwrought ? 
What toil can this new victim claim ? 
Pleasure, for Pleasure's sake besought. 
How men would mock her flaunting shows, 
Her golden promise, if they knew 
What weary work she is to those 
Who have no better work to do ! 

And he who still and silent sits 
In closed room or shady nook, 
And seems to nurse his idle wits 
With folded arms or open book : 



42 



ALMS-GIVING, 



To things now working in that mind 
Your children's children well may owe 
Blessings that hope has ne'er defined, 
Till from his busy thoughts they flow. 

Thus all must work, with head or hand, 
For self or others, good or ill ; 
Life is ordained to bear, like land, 
Some fruit, be fallow as it will ; 
Evil has force itself to sow, 
Where we deny the healthy seed ; 
And all our choice is this, — to grow 
Pasture and grain, or noisome weed. 

Then in content possess your hearts, 
Unenvious of each other's lot, — 
For those which seem the easiest parts 
Have travail which ye reckon not : 
And he is bravest, happiest, best, 
Who, from the task within his span, 
Earns for himself his evening rest, 
And an increase of good for man. 



ALMS-GIVING. — Robert Milnes. 

When Poverty, with mien of shame, 
The sense of pity seeks to touch, — 
Or, bolder, makes the simple claim, 
That I have nothing, you have much, - 
Believe not either man or book 
That bids you close the opening hand, 
And with reproving speech and look 
Your first and free intent withstand. 



ALMS-GIVING. 43 

It may be, that the tale you hear, 
Of pressing wants and losses borne, 
Is heaped or colored for your ear, 
And tatters for the purpose worn ; 
But surely Poverty has not 
A sadder need than this, — to wear 
A mask still meaner than her lot, 
Compassion's scanty food to share. 

It may be that you err, to give 
What will but tempt to further spoil 
Those who in low content would live 
On theft of others' time and toil : 
Yet sickness may have broke or bent 
The active frame or vigorous will ; 
Or hard occasion may prevent 
Their exercise of humble skill. 

It may be that the suppliant's life 
Has lain on many an evil way 
Of foul delight and brutal strife, 
And lawless deeds that shun the day ; 
But how can any gauge of yours 
The depth of that temptation try ? 
What man resists, what man endures, 
Is open to one only eye. 

Why not believe the homely letter, 
That all you give will God restore ? 
The poor man may deserve it better, 
And surely, surely, wants it more : 
Let but the rich man do his part, 
And, whatsoe'er the issue be 
To those who ask, his answering heart 
Will gain and grow in sympathy. 



44 ALMSGIVING. 

Suppose that each from nature got 

Bare quittance of his labor's worth, 

That yearly-teeming flocks were not, 

Nor manifold-producing earth ; 

No wilding growths of fruit and flower, 

Cultured to beautiful and good, 

No creatures for the arm of power 

To take and tame from waste and wood ! 

That all men to their mortal rest 
Passed shadow-like, and left behind 
No free result, no clear bequest, 
Won by their work of hand or mind ! 
That every separate life begun, 
A present to the past unbound, 
A lonely, independent one, 
Sprung from the cold mechanic ground ! 

What would the record of the past, 
The vision of the future be ? 
Nature unchanged from first to last, 
And base the best humanity : 
For in these gifts lies all the space 
Between our England's noblest men, 
And the most vile Australian race 
Outprowling from their bushy den. 

Then freely, as from age to age 

Descending generations bear 

The accumulated heritage 

Of friendly and parental care, — 

Freely as Nature tends her wealth 

Of air and fire, of sea and land, 

Of childhood's happiness and health, — 

So freely open you your hand ! 



THE PATIENCE OF THE POOR. 

Between you and your best intent 
Necessity her brazen bar 
Will often interpose, as sent 
Your pure benevolence to mar : 
Still every gentle word has sway 
To teach the pauper's desperate mood, 
That misery shall not take away 
Franchise of human brotherhood. 

And if this lesson comes too late, 
Woe to the rich and poor and all ! 
The maddened outcast of the gate 
Plunders and murders in the hall : 
Justice can crush and hold in awe, 
While Hope in social order reigns ; 
But if the myriads break the law, 
They break it as a slave his chains ! 



45 



THE PATIENCE OF THE POOR. — Robert Milnes. 

When leisurely the man of ease 
His morning's daily course begins, 
And round him in bright circle sees 
The comforts Independence wins, 
He seems unto himself to hold 
An uncontested natural right 
In life a volume to unfold 
Of simple, ever-new delight. 

And if, before the evening close, 
The hours their rainbow wings let fall, 
And sorrow shakes his bland repose, 
And too continuous pleasures pall, 



46 



THE PATIENCE OF THE POOR. 

He murmurs, as if Nature broke 
Some promise plighted at his birth, 
In bending him beneath the yoke 
Borne by the common sons of earth. 

They starve beside his plenteous board, 
They halt behind his easy wheels, 
But sympathy in vain affords 
The sense of ills he never feels. 
He knows he is the same as they, 
A feeble, piteous, mortal thing, 
And still expects that every day 
Increase and change of bliss should bring. 

Therefore, when he is called to know 
The deep realities of pain, 
He shrinks as from a viewless blow, 
He writhes as in a magic chain : 
Untaught that trial, toil, and care 
Are the great charter of his kind, 
It seems disgrace for him to share 
Weakness of flesh and human mind. 

Not so the People's honest child, 
The field-flower of the open sky, 
Ready to live while winds are wild, 
Nor, when they soften, loth to die : 
To him there never came the thought 
That this, his life, was meant to be 
A pleasure-house, where peace, unbought, 
Should minister to pride or glee. 

You oft may hear him murmur loud 
Against the uneven lots of Fate, 
You oft may see him inly bowed 
Beneath affliction's weight on weight; — 



THE PATIENCE OF THE POOR. 

But rarely turns he on his grief 
A face of petulant surprise, 
Or scorns whate'er benign relief 
The hand of God or man supplies. 

Behold him on his rustic bed, 
The unluxurious couch of need, 
Striving to raise his aching head 
And sinking powerless as a reed : 
So sick in both, he hardly knows 
Which is his heart's or body's sore ; 
For, the more keen his anguish grows, 
His wife and children pine the more. 

No search for him of dainty food, 

But coarsest sustenance of life, — 

No rest by artful quiet wooed, 

But household cries and wants and strife 

Affection can at best employ 

Her utmost of unhandy care, — 

Her prayers and tears are weak to buy 

The costly drug, the purer air. 

Pity herself, at such a sight, 
Might lose her gentleness of mien, 
And clothe her form in angry might, 
And as a wild despair be seen, 
Did she not hail the lesson taught 
By this unconscious suffering boor 
To the high sons of lore and thought, — 
The sacred Patience of the Poor. 

This great endurance of each ill, 
As a plain fact, whose right or wrong 
They question not, confiding still 
That it shall last not overlong ; 



47 



48 



DELIGHT IN GOD ONLY. 



Willing, from first to last, to take 
The mysteries of our life, as given, 
Leaving the time-worn soul to slake 
Its thirst in an undoubted heaven. 



DELIGHT IN GOD ONLY. — Francis Quarles. 

I love (and have some cause to love) the Earth : 
She is my Maker's creature ; therefore good : 
She is my mother, for she gave me birth : 
She is my tender nurse ; she gives me food : 

But what 's a creature, Lord, compared with Thee ? 

Or what 's my mother or my nurse to me ? 

I love the Air : her dainty sweets refresh 
My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me ; 
Her shrill-mouthed choir sustain me with their flesh, 
And with their polyphonian notes delight me : 
But what 's the air or all the sweets that she 
Can bless my soul withal, compared to Thee 



? 



I love the Sea : she is my fellow-creature, 
My careful purveyor ; she provides me store : 
She walls me round ; she makes my diet greater ; 
She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore : 

But, Lord of oceans, when compared with Thee, 
What is the ocean or her wealth to me ? 

To heaven's high city I direct my journey, 
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye ; 
Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney, 
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky : 

But what is heaven, great God, compared to Thee ? 

Without Thy presence, heaven 's no heaven to me. 



HYMN OF APOLLO. 49 

The highest honors that the world can boast 

Are subjects far too low for my desire ; 

The highest beams of glory are, at most, 

But dying sparkles of Thy living fire : 

The loudest flames that earth can kindle be 
But nightly glowworms, if compared to Thee. 

Without Thy presence, wealth is bags of cares ; 

Wisdom, but folly ; joy, disquiet, — sadness ; 

Friendship is treason, and delights are snares ; 

Pleasures but pain, and mirth but pleasing madness : 
Without Thee, Lord, things be not what they be, 
Nor have they being when compared with Thee. 

In having all things, and not Thee, what have I ? 

Not having Thee, what have my labors got ? 

Let me enjoy but Thee, what farther crave I ? 

And having Thee alone, what have I not ? 
I wish nor sea nor land ; nor would I be 
Possessed of heaven, heaven unpossessed of Thee. 



HYMN OF APOLLO.— Shelley. 

The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries, 

From the broad moonlight of the sky, 

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, — 

Waken me, when their Mother, the gray Dawn, 

Tells them that dreams, and that the moon is gone. 

Then I arise, and, climbing heaven's blue dome, 
I walk over the mountains and the waves, 

Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ; 

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire ; the caves 
4 



50 



HYMN OF APOLLO. 



Are filled with my bright presence ; and the air 
Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. 

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day ; 

All men who do or even imagine ill 
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray 

Good minds and open actions take new might, 

Until diminished by the reign of night. 

I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers 
With their ethereal colors ; the moon's globe, 

And the pure stars in their eternal bowers, 
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe ; 

Whatever lamps on earth or heaven may shine 

Are portions of one power, which is mine. 

I stand at noon upon the peak of heaven, 
Then with unwilling steps I wander down 

Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ; 

For grief that I depart, they weep and frown : 

What look is more delightful than the smile 

With which I soothe them from the western isle ? 

I am the eye with which the Universe 
Beholds itself, and knows itself divine ; 

All harmony of instrument or verse, 
All prophecy, all medicine, are mine, 

All light of art or nature ; — to my song 

Victory and praise in their own right belong. 



A DEWDROP FALLING. 51 



A GENIAL MOMENT OFT HAS GIVEN. — Trench. 

A genial moment oft has given 

What years of toil and pain, 
Of long industrious toil, have striven 

To win, and all in vain. 

Yet count not, when thine end is won, 

That labor merely lost ; 
Nor say it had been wiser done 

To spare the painful cost. 

When heaped upon the altar lie 

All things to feed the fire, — 
One spark alighting from on high, — 

The flames at once aspire. 

But those sweet gums and fragrant woods, 

Its rich materials rare, 
By tedious quest o'er lands and floods 

Had first been gathered there. 



A DEWDROP FALLING. — Trench. 

A dewdrop, falling on the wild sea wave, 
Exclaimed in fear, — "I perish in this grave ! " 
But, in a shell received, that drop of dew 
Unto a pearl of marvellous beauty grew ; 
And, happy now, the grace did magnify 
Which thrust it forth, as it had feared, to die ; — 



52 THE PRIORESS'S TALE. 

Until again, " I perish quite," it said, 
Torn by rude diver from its ocean bed ; 
O unbelieving ! — so it came to gleam 
Chief jewel in a monarch's diadem. 



THE SEED MUST DIE. — Trench. 

The seed must die, before the corn appears 
Out of the ground, in blade and fruitful ears. 
Low must those ears by sickle's edge be lain, 
Ere thou canst treasure up the golden grain. 
The grain is crushed before the bread is made, 
And the bread broke ere life to man conveyed. 
O, be content to die, to be laid low, 
And to be crushed, and to be broken so ; 
If thou upon God's table may'st be bread, 
Life-giving food for souls an hungered ! 



THE PRIORESS'S TALE. — Chaucer. 

There was in Asia, in a great city, 
Amonges Christian folk a Jewery, 

Sustained by a lord of that country, 
For foul usure and lucre of villainy, 
Hateful to Christ and to his company ; 

And through the street men mighten ride and wend, 

For it was free, and open at either end. 

A little school of Christian folk there stood 

Down at the further end, in which there were 
Children a heape comen of Christian blood, 



THE PRIORESS'S TALE. 53 

That learned in that schoole year by year 
Such manner doctrine as men used there ; 
This is to say, to sin gen and to read, 
As smalle children do in their childhede. 

Among these children was a widow's son, 
A little clergion, 1 seven years of age, 

That day by day to schoole was his won 2 ; 
And eke also, whereas he saw the image 
Of Christes mother, had he in usage, 

As him was taught, to kneel adown, and say, 

Ave Maria, as he go'th by the way. 

Thus hath this widow her little son ytaught 
Our blissful Lady, Christes mother dear, 

To worship aye, and he forgot it nought ; 
For sely 3 childe will alway soon lere ; 4 
But aye when I remember on this mattere, 

Saint Nicholas stant 5 ever in my presence, 

For he so young to Christ did reverence. 

This little child his little book learning, 
As he sat in the school at his primere, 

He Alma Redemptoris heard e sing, 

As children learned their antiphonere ; 6 
And as he durst, he drew him near and near, 

And hearkened aye the wordes and the note, 

Till he the firste verse could all by rote. 

Nought wist 7 he what this Latin was to say, 
For he so young and tender was of age ; 
But on a day his fellow 'gan to pray 



1 Young clerk. 2 Custom. 3 Simple. 4 Learn. 

5 Standeth. 6 Chanting alternate verses of the Psalms. 

7 Knew. 



54 



THE PRIORESS S TALE. 



T' expounden him this song in his language, 
Or tell him why this song was in usage ; 

This pray'd he him to construe and declare, 

Full often time upon his knees bare. 

His fellow, which that elder was than he, 

Answered him thus : " This song, I have heard say, 

Was maked of our blissful Lady free, l 
Her to salue, 2 and eke her for to pray 
To be our help and succour when we dey. 3 

I can no more expound in this mattere : 

I learne song ; I can 4 but small grammere." 

" And is this song maked in reverence 

Of Christes mother ? " said this innocent : 

" Now certes I will do my diligence 

To conn 5 it all ere Christemas be went, 
Though that I for my primer shall be shent, 6 

And shall be beaten thries in an hour, 

I will it conn our Lady for V honour." 

His fellow taught him homeward privily 
From day to day till he could it by rote, 

And then he sang it well and boldely 

From word to word according with the note : 
Twies a day it passed through his throat, 

To schoolward and homeward when he went ; 

On Christes mother set was his intent. 

As I have said, throughout the Jewery 

This little child, as he came to and fro, 
Full merrily then would he sing and cry, 

1 Bountiful. 2 Praise. 3 Die. 

4 Know. 5 Learn. 

6 Punished, — the strict meaning is ruined. 



THE PRIORESS S TALE. 



55 



O Alma Redemptoris ! ever mo. 

The sweetness hath his hearte pierced so 
Of Christes mother, that to her to pray 
He cannot stint l of singing by the way. 

Our firste foe, the serpent Sathanas, 

That hath in Jewes heart his waspes nest, 

Up swelled and said : " O Ebraike people, alas ! 
Is this to you a thing that is honest, 
That such a boy shall walken as him lest 

In your despite, and sing of such sentence, 

Which is against our lawes reverence ? " 

From thennesforth the Jewes have conspired 
This innocent out of this world to chase : 

A homicide thereto have they hired, 
That in an alley had a private place, 
And as the child 'gan forth by for to pace, 

This cursed Jew him hent 2 and held him fast, 

And cut his throat, and in a pit him cast. 

I say that in a wardrope 3 they him threw, 
Where as these Jewes casten their offale. 

O cursed folk ! of Herodes all-new, 4 
What may your evil intente you avail ? 
Murder will out, certain it will not fail ; 

And namely there the honour of God shall spread 

The blood out crieth on your cursed deed. 

This poore widow waiteth all that night 
After her little child, and he came nought ; 

For which, as soon as it was dayes light, 
With face pale of dread and busy thought, 
She hath at school and elleswhere him sought, 

1 Cease. 2 Caught. 

3 Drain, common sewer. 4 Fresh-revived. 



56 THE PRIORESS'S TALE. 

Till finally she 'gan so far espy l 
That he last seen was in the Jewery. 

With mother's pity in her breast enclosed, 
She go'th, as she were half out of her mind, 

To every place where she hath supposed 
By likelihood her little child to find ; 
And ever on Christes mother meek and kind 

She cried, and at the laste thus she wrought, 

Among the cursed Jewes she him sought. 

She feyneth 2 and she prayeth piteously 
To every Jew that dwelt in thilke place 

To tell her if her child went ought forth by ; 
They saiden, Nay ; but Jesu of his grace 
Gave in her thought, within a little space, 

That in that place after her son she cried, 

There 3 he was casten in a pit beside. 

O great God, that performest thy laud 

By mouth of innocents, lo here thy might ! 

This gem of chastity, this emeraud, 

And eke of martyrdom the ruby bright, 
There he with throat ycarven 4 lay upright, 

He Alma Redemptoris 'gan to sing 

So loud, that all the place 'gan to ring. 

The Christian folk that through the streete went 
In comen for to wonder upon this thing, 

And hastily they for the provost sent : 
He came anon withouten tarrying, 
And herieth 5 Christ, that is of heaven king, 

And eke his mother, honour of mankind, 

And after that the Jewes let he bind. 



1 Discover. 2 Asketh. s Where. 

4 Cut. 5 Praiseth. 



THE PRIORESS'S TALE. 57 

This child with piteous lamentation 

Was taken up, singing his song alway, 

And with honour and great procession 
They carrien him unto the next abbey ; 
His mother swooning by the biere lay : 

Unnethes might l the people that was there 

This newe Rachel bringen from his bier. 

With torment and with shameful death each one 
This provost doth these Jewes for to starve 2 

That of this murder wist, 3 and that anon : 
He n 1 olde 4 no such cursedness observe ; 5 
Evil shall he have that evil will deserve ; 

Therefore with wilde horse he did them draw, 

And after that he hung them by the law. 

Upon his bier aye li'th this innocent 

Before the altar while the masse last, 
And after that, th' abbot with his convent 

Have sped them for to bury him full fast ; 

And when they holy water on him cast, 
Yet spake this child, when sprent 6 with th' holy water, 
And sang, O Alma Redemptoris Mater ! 

This abbot, which that was a holy man, 

As monkes be, or elles ought to be, 
This younge child to conjure he began, 

And said : " O deare child ! I halse 7 thee, 

In virtue of the holy Trinity, 
Tell me what is thy cause for to sing, 
Since that thy throat is cut, to my seeming." 



1 Scarcely were the people able. 2 Die. 

3 Knew. 4 Would not. 5 Attend to. 

6 Sprinkled. 7 Implore. 



58 THE PRIORESS'S TALE. 

" My throat is cut unto my necke bone," 
Saide this childe, " and as by way of kind l 

I should have died, yea longe time agone ; 
But. Jesu Christ, as ye in bookes find, 
Will that his glory last and be in mind, 

And for the worship of his mother dear, 

Yet may I sing Alma loud and clear. 

u This well 2 of mercy, Christes mother sweet, 
I loved alway, as after my conning 3 ; 

And when that I my life would forlete 4 
To me she came, and bade me for to sing 
This anthem verily in my dying, 

As ye have heard ; and when that I had sung, 

Me thought she laid a grain upon my tongue. 

" Wherefore I sing, and sing I must certain, 
In honour of that blissful maiden free, 

Till from my tongue off taken is the grain. 
And after that thus saide she to me : 
c My little child, then will I fetchen thee, 

When that the grain is from thy tongue ytake : 

Be not aghast, I will thee not forsake.' " 

This holy monk, this abbot him mean I, 

His tongue out caught, and took away the grain, 

And he gave up the ghost full softily. 

And when this abbot had this wonder see 
His salte teares trill'd adown as rain, 

And groff he fell all plat upon the ground, 5 

And still he lay as he had been ybound. 



1 In the course of nature. 2 Spring. 3 Ability, 

4 Forsake. 5 Flat on the ground. 



CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR. 

The convent lay eke on the pavement 

Weeping and herying l Christes mother dear ; 

And after that they risen, and forth been went, 
And took away this martyr from his bier, 
And in a tomb of marble stones clear 

Enclosen they his little body sweet : 

There he is now God lene 2 us for to meet. 



59 



CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR. — 

Wordsworth. 

Who is the happy warrior ? Who is he 
That every man in arms should wish to be ? — 
It is the generous spirit, who, when brought 
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought : 
Whose high endeavours are an inward light 
That makes the path before him always bright : 
Who, with a natural instinct to discern 
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn ; 
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 
But makes his moral being his prime care : 
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, 
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train ! 
Turns his necessity to glorious gain ; 
In face of these doth exercise a power 
Which is our human nature's highest dower ; 
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves 
Of their bad influence, and their good receives : 
By objects which might force the soul to abate 
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate ; 

1 Praising. 2 Grant. 



60 



CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR. 



Is placable, — because occasions rise 

So often that demand such sacrifice ; 

More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, 

As tempted more ; more able to endure, 

As more exposed to suffering and distress ; 

Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. — 

'T is he whose law is reason ; who depends 

Upon that law as on the best of friends ; 

Whence, in a state where men are tempted still 

To evil for a guard against worse ill, 

And what in quality or act is best 

Doth seldom on a right foundation rest, 

He labors good on good to fix, and owes 

To virtue every triumph that he knows : 

Who, if he rise to station of command, 

Rises by open means ; and there will stand 

On honorable terms, or else retire, 

And in himself possess his own desire : 

Who comprehends his trust, and to the same 

Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ; 

And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait 

For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state ; 

Whom they must follow ; on whose head must fall, 

Like showers of manna, if they come at all : 

Whose powers shed round him in the common strife, 

Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 

A constant influence, a peculiar grace ; 

But who, if he be called upon to face 

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 

Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 

Is happy as a lover, and attired 

With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; 

And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw ; 

Or, if an unexpected call succeed, 

Come when it will, is equal to the need : 



COMPENSATION. 61 

He who, though thus endued, as with a sense 

And faculty for storm and turbulence, 

Is yet a soul whose master-bias leans 

To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; 

Sweet images ! which, wheresoe'er he be, 

Are at his heart ; and such fidelity 

It is his darling passion to approve ; 

More brave for this, that he hath much to love : 

'T is, finally, the man, who, lifted high, 

Conspicuous object in a nation's eye, 

Or left unthought of in obscurity, — 

Who, with a toward or untoward lot, 

Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, — 

Plays, in the many games of life, that one 

Where what he most doth value must be won : 

Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, 

Nor thought of tender happiness betray : 

Who, not content that former worth stand fast, 

Looks forward, persevering to the last, 

From well to better, daily self-surpassed : 

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth 

For ever, and to noble deeds give birth, 

Or he must fall and sleep without his fame, 

And leave a dead, unprofitable name, — 

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; 

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 

His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause : — 

This is the happy warrior ; this is he 

Whom every man in arms should wish to be. 



COMPENSATION. — Trench. 

Wotjldst thou from each man's coronal select 

The choicest leaves with which his brows are decked ; 



62 



SONNET. 



That, all into one chaplet for thy head 
Entwined, thou may'st be proudly garlanded ? 

Look round thee, — is not every thing content, 
Having a share, not all the ornament ? 

The sweetest nightingale is dusky-brown ; 
While golden-feathered birds no music own. 

The ruby long outlasts the scented rose ; 
But then the ruby no such fragrance knows. 

From Egypt Moses did the people lead ; 
To plant in Canaan must be Joshua's deed. 

David might lay all rich materials by ; 

His son first raised the goodly fane on high. 

But once and but to One it did compete, 

All rays of glory round his head should meet. 



SONNET. — Trench. 

Ulysses, sailing by the Sirens' isle, 

Sealed first his comrades' ears, then bade them fast 

Bind him with many a fetter to the mast, 

Lest those sweet voices should their souls beguile, 

And to their ruin flatter them, the while 

Their homeward bark was sailing swiftly past ; 

And thus the peril they behind them cast, 

Though chased by those weird voices many a mile. 

But yet a nobler cunning Orpheus used ; 

No fetter he put on, nor stopped his ear, 

But ever, as he passed, sang high and clear 

The blisses of the gods, their holy joys, 

And with diviner melody confused 

And marred earth's sweetest music to a noise. 



HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. 63 



HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHA- 
MOUNI. — Coleridge. 

Besides the rivers Arve and Arveiron, which have their 
sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents 
rush down its sides ; and within a few paces of the Glaciers, 
the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers, with its 
" flowers of loveliest blue." 

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star 
In his steep course ? so long he seems to pause 
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc ! 
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base 
Rave ceaselessly ; but thou, most awful form, 
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, 
How silently ! Around thee and above 
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, 
An ebon mass : methinks thou piercest it, 
As with a wedge ! But when I look again, 
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, 
Thy habitation from eternity ! 

dread and silent mount ! I gazed upon thee, 
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, 

Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer, 

1 worshipped the Invisible alone. 

Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody, 
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, 
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, 
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy : 
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused, 
Into the mighty vision passing, — there, 
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven ! 

Awake, my soul ! not only passive praise 
Thou owest, — not alone these swelling tears, 
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy ! Awake, 



64 



HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OP CHAMOUNI. 



Voice of sweet song ! Awake, my heart, awake ! 
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn ! 

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale ! 
O, struggling with the darkness all the night, 
And visited all night by troops of stars, 
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink : 
Companion of the morning-star at dawn, 
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn 
Co-herald : wake, O, wake, and utter praise ! 
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth ? 
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light ? 
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams ? 

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad ! 
Who called you forth from night and utter death, 
From dark and icy caverns called you forth, 
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, 
For ever shattered and the same for ever ? 
Who gave you your invulnerable life, 
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ? 
And who commanded (and the silence came), 
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest ? 

Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow 
Adown enormous ravines slope amain, — 
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, 
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge ! 
Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts ! 
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 
Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun 
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flowers 
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ? — 
God ! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
Answer ; and let the ice-plains echo, God ! 
God ! sing, ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice ! 



THE PRAISE OF MEN. 65 

Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds ! 
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God ! 

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost ! 
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest ! 
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm ! 
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds ! 
Ye signs and wonders of the elements ! 
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise ! 

Thou, too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks ! 
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, 
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, 
Into the depths of clouds that veil thy breast, — 
Thou, too, again, stupendous mountain ! thou 
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low 
In adoration, upward from thy base 
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, 
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, 
To rise before me, — rise, O, ever rise, 
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth ! 
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, 
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, 
Great hierarch ! tell thou the silent sky, 
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, 
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God. 



THE PRAISE OF MEN.— Trench. 

"Cum laudaris, teipsum contemne." 

Augustine. 

When men exalt thee with their flatteries, 
Be thou provoked thine own self to despise, 
And, for an help to this, the meanest thing 
Which thou hast ever done to memory bring. 
5 



66 



COUPLETS. 



Think, too, that now thou dost in peril fall 
Of doing a yet meaner thing than all, 
If, being what thou art in thine own sight, 
Thou canst this praise appropriate as thy right. 



COUPLETS.— Trench. 

To halls of heavenly truth admission would st thou win ? 
Oft Knowledge stands without, while Love may enter 
in. 

Lovingly to each other sun and moon give place, 
Else were the mighty heaven for them too narrow 
space. 

Despise not little sins ; for mountain-high may stand 
The piled heap made up of smallest grains of sand. 

Despise not little sins ; the gallant ship may sink, 
Though only drop by drop the watery tide it drink. 

God many a spiritual house has reared, but never one 
Where lowliness was not laid first, the corner-stone. 

Rear highly as thou wilt thy branches in the air, 
But that thy roots shall strike as deep in earth have 
care. 

Sin, not till it is left, will duly sinful seem ; 

A man must waken first, ere he can tell his dream. 

When thou art fain to trace a map of thine own heart, 
As undiscovered land set down the largest part. 



COUPLETS. 67 

Wouldst thou do harm, and yet unharmed thyself abide ? 
None ever struck another, save through his own side. 

God's dealings still are love, — his chastemngs are alone 
Love now compelled to take an altered, louder tone. 

From our ill-ordered hearts we oft are fain to roam, 
As men go forth who find unquietness at home. 

Why furnish with such care thy lodging of a night, 
And leave the while thy home in such a naked plight ? 

When thou hast thanked thy God for every blessing 

sent, 
What time will then remain for murmurs or lament ? 

Envy detects the spots in the clear orb of light, 
And Love the little stars in the gloomiest, saddest night. 

Thou canst not choose but serve, — man's lot is ser- 
vitude, — 
But thou hast this much choice, a bad lord or a good. 

Before the eyes of men let duly shine thy light, 
But ever let thy life's best part be out of sight. 

Wouldst thou go forth to bless, be sure of thine own 

ground, 
Fix well thy centre first, then draw thy circles round. 

Sin may be clasped so close we cannot see its face, 
Nor seen nor loathed until held from us a small space. 

If humble, next of thy humility beware, 
And lest thou shouldst grow proud of such a grace 
have care. 



68 



COUPLETS. 



How fearful is his case whom now God does not 
chide 

When sinning worst, to whom even chastening is de- 
nied ! 

God often would enrich, but finds not where to place 
His treasure, nor in hand nor heart a vacant space. 

O, leave to God at sight of sin incensed to be ! 
Sinner, if thou art grieved, that is enough for thee. 

Set not thy heart on things given only with intent 
To be alleviations of thy banishment. 

Ill fares the child of heaven, who will not entertain 
On earth the stranger's grief, the exile's sense of 
pain. 

Mark how there still has run, enwoven from above, 
Through thy life's darkest woof, the golden thread of 
love. 

Things earthly we must know ere love them : 't is alone 
Things heavenly that must be first loved and after 
known. 

The sinews of Love's arm use makes more firm and 

strong, 
Which, being left unused, will disappear ere long. 

Wouldst thou abolish quite strongholds of self and 

sin? 
Fear can but make the breach for Love to enter in. 

When God afflicts thee, think he hews a rugged stone, 
Which must be shaped, or else aside as useless thrown. 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 



69 



Evil, like a rolling stone upon a mountain-top, 
A child may first set off, a giant cannot stop. 

He knew, who healed our wounds, we quickly should 

be fain 
Our old hurts to forget, — so let the scars remain. 

When will the din of earth grate harshly on our ears ? 
When we have once heard plain the music of the 
spheres. 

Why win we not at once what we in prayer require ? 
That we may learn great things as greatly to desire. 

The tasks, the joys of earth, the same in heaven will 

be ; 
Only the little brook has widened to a sea. 

Who hunt this world's delight too late their hunting 

rue, 
When it a lion proves, the hunter to pursue. 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOL- 
LECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. — Wordsworth. 



There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 



70 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 

II. 

The rainbow comes and goes, 

And lovely is the rose ; 

The moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 

Waters on a starry night 

Are beautiful and fair ; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth ; 
But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. 

in. 

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, 
And while the young lambs bound, 
As to the tabour's sound, 
To me alone there came a thought of grief: 
A timely utterance gave that thought relief, 

And I again am strong : 
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ; 
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ; 
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, 
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, 
And all the earth is gay ; 
Land and sea 
Give themselves up to jollity, 
And with the heart of May 
Doth every beast keep holiday ; — 
Thou child of joy, 
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 
Shepherd boy ! 

IV. 

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call 

Ye to each other make ; I see 
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ; 

My heart is at your festival, 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 71 

My head hath its coronal, 
The fulness of your bliss I feel, — I feel it all. 

evil day ! if I were sullen, 
While the earth herself is adorning 

This sweet May -morning, 
And the children are culling 

On every side, 
In a thousand valleys far and wide, 
Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm, 
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm : — 

1 hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! — 
But there 's a tree, of many one, 

A single field which I have looked upon, 

Both of them speak of something that is gone : 

The pansy at my feet 

Doth the same tale repeat : 
Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? 
Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? 



Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar : 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home : 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing boy ; 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy ; 
The youth, who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 



72 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 



And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended ; 
At length the man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 



VI. 

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; 
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
And, even with something of a mother's mind, 

And no unworthy aim, 

The homely nurse doth all she can 
To make her foster-child, her inmate man, 

Forget the glories he hath known, 
And that imperial palace whence he came. 



VII. 

Behold the child among his new-born blisses, 
A six years' darling of a pigmy size ! 
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, 
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, 
With light upon him from his father's eyes ! 
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, 
Some fragment from his dream of human life, 
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art ; 
A wedding or a festival, 
A mourning or a funeral ! 

And this hath now his heart, 
And unto this he frames his song : 
Then will he fit his tongue 
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 
But it will not be long, 
Ere this be thrown aside, 
And with new joy and pride 
The little actor cons another part ; 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 73 

Filling from time to time his " humorous stage " 
With all the persons, down to palsied age, 
That life brings with her in her equipage ; 

As if his whole vocation 

Were endless imitation. 



VIII. 

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 

Thy soul's immensity ! 
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep 
Thy heritage ! thou eye among the blind, 
That, deaf, and silent, read'st the eternal deep, 
Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind, — 

Mighty prophet ! seer blest ! 

On whom those truths do rest, 
Which we are toiling all our lives to find, 
In darkness lost,- the darkness of the grave ; 
Thou, over whom thy immortality 
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, 
A presence which is not to be put by ! 
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might 
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, 
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
The years to bring the inevitable yoke, 
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? 
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! 

IX. 

O, joy ! that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, — 
That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive ! 



74 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 

The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benediction : not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest ; 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : 
Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise ; 
But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 
Fallings from us, vanishings ; 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized ; 
High instincts before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 
But for those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections, 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence : truths that wake, 

To perish never ; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 

Nor man, nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 

Hence, in a season of calm weather, 
Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea, 
Which brought us hither, 

Can in a moment travel thither, 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 75 



Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song ! 
And let the young lambs bound, 
As to the tabour's sound ! 
We in thought will join your throng, 

Ye that pipe and ye that play, 
Ye that through your hearts to-day- 
Feel the gladness of the May ! 
What though the radiance which was once so bright 
Be now for ever taken from my sight, 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower ; 
We will grieve not, rather find 
Strength in what remains behind, 
In the primal sympathy 
Which having been must ever be, 
In the soothing thoughts that spring 
Out of human suffering, 
In the faith that looks through death, 
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 

XI. 

And, O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, 

Forebode not of any severing of our loves ! 

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; 

I only have relinquished one delight 

To live beneath your more habitual sway. 

I love the brooks which down their channels fret, 

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; 

The innocent brightness of a new-born day 

Is lovely yet ; 
The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; 
Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 



76 



SONNET. — MESSIAH. 



Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears, 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 



SONNET.— Wordsworth. 

The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
Little we see in nature that is ours ; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; 
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; 
It moves us not. — Great God ! I M rather be 
A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn ; 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea ; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 



MESSIAH. — Pope. 

A SACRED ECLOGUE. 

Ye Nymphs of Solyma ! begin the song : 
To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong. 
The mossy fountains, and the sylvan shades, 
The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids, 
Delight no more. — O thou my voice inspire, 
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire ! 



MESSIAH. 



77 



Rapt into future times, the bard begun : 
A virgin shall conceive, a virgin bear a son ! 
From Jesse's root behold a branch arise, 
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies ; 
The ethereal spirit o'er its leaves shall move, 
And on its top descends the mystic dove. 
Ye heavens, from high the dewy nectar pour, 
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower ! 
The sick and weak the healing plant shall aid, 
From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade. 
All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail ; 
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale ; 
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, 
And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend. 
Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn ! 
O, spring to light, auspicious babe, be born ! 
See, Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring, 
With all the incense of the breathing spring ! 
See lofty Lebanon his head advance ! 
See nodding forests on the mountains dance ! 
See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise, 
And Carmel's flowery top perfume the skies ! 
Hark ! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers : 
Prepare the way ! a God, a God appears ! 
A God, a God ! the vocal hills reply, 
The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity. 
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies ! 
Sink down, ye mountains, and ye valleys, rise ! 
With heads declined, ye cedars, homage pay ! 
Be smooth, ye rocks ! ye rapid floods, give way ! 
The Saviour comes, by ancient bards foretold : 
Hear him, ye deaf, and all ye blind, behold ! 
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, 
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day : 
'T is he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear, 
And bid new music charm the unfolding ear : 



78 MESSIAH. 

The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego, 

And leap exulting, like the bounding roe. 

No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear ; 

From every face he wipes off every tear. 

In adamantine chains shall Death be bound, 

And Hell's grim tyrant feel the eternal wound. 

As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care, 

Seeks freshest pasture and the purest air, 

Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs, 

By day o'ersees them and by night protects, 

The tender lambs he raises in his arms, 

Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms; 

Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage, 

The promised father of the future age. 

No more shall nation against nation rise, 

Nor ardent warriors meet, with hateful eyes, 

Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er, 

The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more ; 

But useless lances into scythes shall bend, 

And the broad falchion in a ploughshare end. 

Then palaces shall rise ; the joyful son 

Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun ; 

Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield, 

And the same hand that sowed shall reap the field. 

The swain in barren deserts, with surprise, 

Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise ; 

And starts, amid the thirsty wilds to hear 

New falls of water murmuring in his ear. 

On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes, 

The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods. 

Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn, 

The spiry fir and shapely box adorn : 

To leafless shrubs the flowering palms succeed, 

And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed. 

The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead, 

And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead ; 



MESSIAH. 



79 



The steer and lion at one crib shall meet, 

And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet. 

The smiling infant in his hand shall take 

The crested basilisk and speckled snake, 

Pleased, the green lustre of the scales survey, 

And with their forky tongue shall innocently play. 

Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise ! 

Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes ! 

See a long race thy spacious courts adorn ; 

See future sons and daughters, yet unborn, 

In crowding ranks on every side arise, 

Demanding life, impatient for the skies ! 

See barbarous nations at thy gates attend, 

Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend ; 

See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings, 

And heaped with products of Sabsean springs ! 

For thee Idume's spicy forests blow, 

And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow. 

See heaven its sparkling portals wide display, 

And break upon thee in a flood of day ! 

No more the rising sun shall gild the morn, 

Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn ; 

But lost, dissolved, in thy superior rays, 

One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze, 

O'erflow thy courts : the Light himself shall shine 

Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine ! 

The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay, 

Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away ; 

But fixed his word, his saving power remains ; 

Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns ! 



80 



LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. 



LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.— Tennyson. 

Lady Clara Vere de Vefe, 

Of me you shall not win renown ; 
You thought to break a country heart 

For pastime, ere you went to town. 
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled 

I saw the snare, and I retired : 
The daughter of a hundred earls, — - 

You are not one to be desired. 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 

I know you proud to bear your name ; 
Your pride is yet no mate to mine, 

Too proud to care from whence I came. 
Nor would I break, for your sweet sake, 

A heart that doats on truer charms ; 
A simple maiden in her flower 

Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms. 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 

Some meeker pupil you must find ; 
For were you queen of all that is, 

I could not stoop to such a mind. 
You sought to prove how I could love, 

And my disdain is my reply ; 
The lion on your old stone gates 

Is not more cold to you than I. 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 

You put strange memories in my head : 
Not thrice your branching limes have blown, 

Since I beheld young Lawrence dead. 



LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. 81 

O, your sweet eyes, your low replies ! 

A great enchantress you may be ; 
But there was that across his throat 

Which you had hardly cared to see. 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 

When thus he met his mother's view, 
She had the passions of her kind, 

She spake some certain truths of you ; 
Indeed, I heard one bitter word 

That scarce is fit for you to hear. 
Her manners had not that repose 

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 

There stands a spectre in your hall : 
The guilt of blood is at your door ; 

You changed a wholesome heart to gall. 
You held your course without remorse, 

To make him trust his modest worth, 
And, last, you fixed a vacant stare, 

And slew him with your noble birth. 

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, 

From yon blue heavens above us bent, 
The gardener Adam and his wife 

Smile at the claims of long descent. 
Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 

'T is only noble to be good ; 
Kind hearts are more than coronets, 

And simple faith than Norman blood. 

I know you, Clara Vere de Vere, 

You pine among your halls and towers ; 

The languid light of your proud eyes 
Is wearied of the rolling hours. 
6 



82 



TRIAL BEFORE REWARD. 



In glowing health, with boundless wealth, 
But sickening of a vague disease, 

You know so ill to deal with time, 

You needs must play such pranks as these. 

Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, 

If time be heavy on your hands, 
Are there no beggars at your gate, 

Nor any poor about your lands ? 
O, teach the orphan-boy to read, 

Or teach the orphan-girl to sew, 
Pray Heaven for a human heart, 

And let the foolish yeoman go. 



TRIAL BEFORE REWARD. — Francis Quarks. 

What joyful harvester did e'er obtain 

The sweet fruition of his hopeful gain, 

Till he in hardy labors first had passed 

The summer's heat and stormy winter's blast ? 

A sable night returns a shining morrow, 

And days of joy ensue sad nights of sorrow ; 

The way to bliss lies not on beds of down, 

And he that had no cross deserves no crown. 

There 's but one heaven, one place of perfect ease ; 

In man it lies to take it where he please, 

Above, or here below : and few men do 

Enjoy the one, and taste the other too : 

Sweating and constant labor win the goal 

Of rest ; afflictions clarify the soul, 

And, like hard masters, give more hard directions, 

Tutoring the nonage of uncurbed affections. 

Wisdom, the antidote of sad despair, 

Makes sharp afflictions seem not as they are, 



THE BARD. 83 

Through patient sufferance ; and doth apprehend, 

Not as they seeming are, but as they end. 

To bear affliction with a bended brow, 

Or stubborn heart, is but to disallow 

The speedy means to health ; salve heals no sore, 

If misapplied, but makes the grief the more. 

Who sends affliction sends an end, and he 

Best knows what 's best for him, what 's best for me : 

'T is not for me to carve me where I like ; 

Him pleases when he list to stroke or strike. 

I '11 neither wish nor yet avoid temptation, 

But still expect it, and make preparation : 

If he thinks best my faith shall not be tried, 

Lord, keep me spotless from presumptuous pride ! 

If otherwise, with his trial srive me care 

By thankful patience to prevent despair ; 

Fit me to bear whate'er thou shalt assign ; 

I kiss the rod, because the rod is thine ! 

Howe'er, let me not boast, nor yet repine ; 

With trial, or without, Lord, make me thine ! 



THE BARD. — Gray. 

The following ode is founded on a tradition current in 
Wales, that Edward the First, when he completed the con- 
quest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his 
hands to be put to death. 

" Ruin seize thee, ruthless king ! 
Confusion on thy banners wait ! 
Though fanned by conquest's crimson wing, 
They mock the air with idle state. 
Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail, 
Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail 



84 



THE BARD. 



To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, 
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears ! 
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride 
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay, 
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side 
He wound with toilsome march his long array. 
Stout Gloster stood aghast in speechless trance : 
" To arms ! " cried Mortimer, and couched his quiv- 
ering lance. 

On a rock whose haughty brow 
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, 
Robed in the sable garb of woe, 
With haggard eyes the poet stood 
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair 
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air), 
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire, 
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre. 
" Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave, 
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath ! 
O'er thee, O king, their hundred arms they wave, 
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe ; 
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day, 
To highborn Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay. 
Cold is Cadwallo's tongue, 
That hushed the stormy main ; 
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed ; 
Mountains, ye mourn in vain 
Mod red, whose magic song 

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topped head ! 
On dreary Arvon's shore they lie, 
Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale : 
Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail ; 
The famished eagle screams and passes by. 
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, 
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, 



THE BARD. 



85 



Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, 

Ye died amidst your dying country's cries! — 

No more I weep. They do not sleep. 

On yonder cliffs, a grisly band, 

I see them sit ! they linger yet, 

Avengers of their native land : 

With me in dreadful harmony they join, 

And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line ! " 

" Weave the warp, and weave the woof, 
The winding-sheet of Edward's race ; 
Give ample room, and verge enough 
The characters of hell to trace ! 
Mark the year, and mark the night, 
When Severn shall reecho with affright 
The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roofs that 

rin g> — 
Shrieks of an agonizing king ! l 

She-wolf of France, 2 with unrelenting fangs, 

That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, 

From thee be born who o'er thy country hangs 

The scourge of Heaven ! What terrors round him 

wait ! 

Amazement in his van, with flight combined ; 

And sorrow's faded form, and solitude behind ! 3 

" Mighty victor, mighty lord, 
Low on his funeral couch he lies ! 
No pitying heart, no eye afford 
A tear to grace his obsequies ! 4 



1 Edward the Second, cruelly butchered in Berkeley castle. 

2 Isabel of France, queen of Edward the Second. 

3 Triumphs of Edward the Third in France. 

4 Death of that king, abandoned by his children, and even 
robbed in his last moments by his courtiers. 



86 



THE BARD. 



Is the sable warrior ! fled ? 
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. 
The swarm, that in the noontide beam were borne, 
Gone to salute the rising morn. 
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, 
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm 
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes ; 
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ; 2 
Regardless of the sleeping whirlwind's sway, 
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening 
prey. 

" Fill high the sparkling bowl, 
The rich repast prepare ; 
Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast : 
Close by the regal chair 
Fell thirst and famine scowl 
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. 3 
Heard ye the din of battle bray, 
Lance to lance, and horse to horse ? 
Long years of havoc urge their destined course, 
And through the kindred squadrons mow their 

way. 4 
Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, 
With many a foul and midnight murder fed, 5 



1 Edward, the Black Prince, dead some time before his 
father. 

2 Magnificence of Richard the Second's reign. 

3 Richard the Second, as we are told by all the older 
writers, was starved to death. 

4 Ruinous civil wars of York and Lancaster. 

5 Henry the Sixth, George, Duke of Clarence, Edward the 
Fifth, Richard, Duke of York, &c, believed to be murdered 
secretly in the Tower of London. The oldest part of that 
structure is attributed to Julius Caesar. 



THE BARD. 



87 



Revere his consort's l faith, his father's 2 fame, 

And spare the meek usurper's holy head ! 3 

Above, below, the rose of snow 

Twined with her blushing foe 4 we spread : 

The bristled boar 5 in infant gore 

Wallows beneath the thorny shade. 

Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, 

Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom ! 

" Edward, lo ! to sudden fate 
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.) 
Half of thy heart we consecrate ! 6 
(The web is wove. The work is done.)" 
" Stay, O, stay ! nor thus forlorn 
Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn ! 
In yon bright track that fires the western skies, 
They melt, they vanish from my eyes ! 
But, O, what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height 
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll ? 
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight ! 
• Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul ! 
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail. 7 
All hail, ye genuine kings ! Britannia's issue, hail ! 8 

1 Margaret of Anjou, a woman of heroic spirit, who strug- 
gled hard to save her husband and her crown. 

2 Henry the Fifth. 

3 Henry the Sixth, very near being canonized. The line 
of Lancaster had no right of inheritance to the crown. 

4 The white and red roses, devices of York and Lancaster. 

5 The silver boar was the badge of Richard the Third ; 
whence he was usually known in "his own time by the name 
of the Boar. 

6 Eleanor of Castile died a few years after the conquest of 
Wales. 

7 It was the common belief of the Welsh nation that king 
Arthur was still alive in Fairy-land, and would return again 
to reign over Britain. 

8 Both Medin and Taliessin had prophesied that the 
Welsh should regain the sovereignty of this island ; which 
seemed to be accomplished in the House of Tudor. 



88 



THE BARD- 



" Girt with many a baron bold, 
Sublime their stony fronts they rear ; 
And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old, 
In bearded majesty appear. 
In the midst a form divine ! l 
Her eye proclaims her of the Briton line ; 
Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face, 
Attempered sweet to virgin grace. 
What strings symphonious tremble in the air ! 
What strains of vocal transport round her play ! 
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, 2 hear ! 
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay ; 
Bright rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings, 
Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colored 
wings. 

" The verse adorn again, 
Fierce war, and faithful love, 
And truth severe, by fairy fiction dressed. 
In buskined measures 3 move 
Pale grief, and pleasing pain, 
With honor, tyrant of the throbbing breast. 
A voice, 4 as of the cherub-choir, 
Gales from blooming Eden bear ; 
And distant warblings 5 lessen on my ear, 
That lost in long futurity expire. 
Fond, impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, 
Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day? 
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, 
And warms the nations with redoubled ray. 

1 Queen Elizabeth. 

2 Taliessin, chief of the bards, flourished in the sixth cen- 
tury. His works are still preserved, and his memory held in 
high veneration among his countrymen. 

3 Shakspeare. 

4 Milton. 

5 The succession of poets after Milton's time. 



SLEEP. 89 

Enough for me : with joy I see 

The different doom our fates assign. 

Be thine despair, and sceptred care ; 

To triumph and to die are mine." 

He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height 

Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night. 



SLEEP. — Miss Barrett. 

Of all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward unto souls afar, 
Along the Psalmist's music deep, — 
Now tell me if that any is 
For gift or grace surpassing this, — 
" He giveth his beloved sleep " ? 

What would we give to our beloved ? 
The hero's heart, to be unmoved, — 
The poet's star- tuned harp to sweep, — 
The senate's shout to patriot vows, — 
The monarch's crown, to light the brows ? 
" He giveth his beloved sleep ! " 

What do we give to our beloved ? 
A little faith, all undisproved, — 
A little dust to overweep, — 
And bitter memories, to make 
The whole earth blasted for our sake ! 
" He giveth his beloved sleep ! " 

" Sleep soft, beloved ! " we sometimes say, 
But have no tune to charm away 



90 



SLEEP. 

Sad dreams, that through the eyelids creep. 
But never doleful dream again 
Shall break the happy slumber, when 
" He giveth his beloved sleep ! " 

O earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
O men, with wailing in your voices ! 
O delved gold, the wailer's heap ! 

strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
God makes a silence through you all, 
And " giveth his beloved sleep ! " 

His dews drop mutely on the hill, 
His cloud above it saileth still ; 
Though on its slope men toil and reap, 
More softly than the dew is shed, 
Or cloud is floated overhead, 
" He giveth his beloved sleep." 

Yea, men may wonder, while they scan 
A living, thinking, feeling man 
In such a rest his heart to keep ; 
But angels say, — and through the word 

1 ween their blessed smile is heard, — 
u He giveth his beloved sleep ! " 

For me, my heart, that erst did go 
Most like a tired child at a show, 
That sees through tears the juggler's leap, 
Would now its weary vision close, — 
Would, childlike, on his love repose, 
" Who giveth his beloved sleep ! " 

And friends ! — dear friends ! — when it shall 

be 
That this low breath is gone from me, 



PROVIDENCE. 91 

And round my bier ye come to weep, 
Let one, most loving of you all, 
Say, " Not a tear must o'er her fall, — 
c He giveth his beloved sleep ! ' " 



PROVIDENCE. — Herbert. 

O sacred Providence, who, from end to end, 
Strongly and sweetly movest ! shall I write, 
And not of thee, through whom my fingers bend 
To hold my quill ? Shall they not do thee right ? 

Of all the creatures, both in sea and land, 
Only to man thou hast made known thy ways, 
And put the pen alone into his hand, 
And made him secretary of thy praise. 

Beasts fain would sing ; birds ditty to their notes ; 
Trees would be tuning on their native lute 
To thy renown : but all their hands and throats 
Are brought to man, while they are lame and mute. 

Man is the world's high priest ; he doth present 

The sacrifice for all ; while they below 

Unto the service mutter an assent, — 

Such as springs use that fall, and winds that blow. 

Tempests are calm to thee ; they know thy hand, 
And hold it fast, as children do their father's, 
Which cry and follow. Thou hast made poor sand 
Check the proud sea, even when it swells and gathers. 



92 



PROVIDENCE. 



How finely dost thou times and seasons spin, 
And make a twist checkered with night and day ! 
Which, as it lengthens, winds, and winds us in, 
As bowls go on, but turning all the way. 

Each creature hath a wisdom for his good : 
The pigeons feed their tender offspring, crying. 
When they are callow ; but withdraw their food, 
When they are fledged, that need may teach 'em 
flying. 

Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise 
Their master's flower, but leave it, having done, 
As fair as ever, and as fit to use : 
So both the flower doth stay, and honey run. 

Who hath the virtue to express the rare 
And curious virtues both of herbs and stones ? 
Is there an herb for that ? O, that thy care 
Would show a root that gives expressions ! 

E'en poisons praise thee. Should a thing be lost ? 
Should creatures want, for want of heed, their due ? 
Since where are poisons, antidotes are most ; 
The help stands close, and keeps the fear in view. 

The sea, which seems to stop the traveller, 
Is by a ship the speedier passage made ; 
The winds, who think they rule the mariner, 
Are ruled by him, and taught to serve his trade. 

And as thy house is full, so I adore 

Thy curious art in marshalling thy goods. 

The hills with health abound ; the vales, with store ; 

The south, with marble ; north, with furs and woods. 



ARETHUSA. 93 

All countries have enough to serve their need : 
If they seek fine things, thou dost make them run 
For their offence ; and then dost turn their speed 
To be commerce and trade from sun to sun. 

Sometimes thou dost divide thy gifts to man, 
Sometimes unite. The Indian nut alone 
Is clothing, meat and trencher, drink and can, 
Boat, cable, sail and needle, all in one. 

But who hath praise enough ? Nay, who hath any ? 
None can express thy works, but he that knows them ; 
And none can know thy works, which are so many 
And so complete, but only he that owns them. 

All things that are, though they have several ways, 
Yet in their being join with one advice 
To honor thee ; and so I give thee praise 
In all my other hymns, but in this twice. 

Each thing that is, although in use and name 
It go for one, hath many ways in store 
To honor thee : and so each hymn thy fame 
Extoileth many ways ; yet this, one more. 



ARETHUSA. — Shelley. 

Arethusa arose 

From her couch of snows, 
In the Acroceraunian mountains, 

From cloud and from crag, 

With many a jag, 
Shepherding her bright fountains. 



94 



ARETHUSA. 



She leapt down the rocks 

With her rainbow locks 
Streaming among the streams ; — 

Her steps paved with green 

The downward ravine, 
Which slopes to the western gleams : 

And gliding and springing 

She went, ever singing 
In murmurs as soft as sleep ; 

The Earth seemed to love her, 

And Heaven smiled above her, 
As she lingered towards the deep. 

Then Alpheus bold, 

On his glacier cold, 
With his trident the mountains strook ; 

And opened a chasm 

In the rocks ; — with the spasm 
All Erymanthus shook. 

And the black south wind 

It concealed behind 
The urns of the silent snow, 

And earthquake and thunder 

Did rend in sunder 
The bars of the springs below : 

The beard and the hair 

Of the river-god were 
Seen through the torrent's sweep, 

As he followed the light 

Of the fleet nymph's flight 
To the brink of the Dorian deep. 

" O, save me ! O, guide me, 
And bid the deep hide me ! 

For he grasps me now by the hair ! " 
The loud Ocean heard, 
To its blue depth stirred, 

And divided at her prayer ; 



ARETHUSA. 

And under the water 

The Earth's white daughter 
Fled like a sunny beam ; 

Behind her descended 

Her billows unblended 
With the brackish Dorian stream. 

Like a gloomy stain 

On the emerald main, 
Alpheus rushed behind, — 

As an eagle pursuing 

A dove to its ruin 
Down the streams of the cloudy wind. 

Under the bowers 

Where the Ocean Powers 
Sit on their pearled thrones, — 

Through the coral woods 

Of the weltering floods, 
Over heaps of unvalued stones, — 

Through the dim beams 

Which amid the streams 
Weave a net-work of colored light, 

And under the caves 

Where the shadowy waves 
Are as green as the forest's night : — 

Outspeeding the shark, 

And the sword-fish dark, 
Under the ocean-foam, 

And up through the rifts 

Of the mountain clifts 
They passed to their Dorian home. 

And now from their fountains 

In Enna's mountains, 
Down one vale where the morning basks, 

Like friends once parted, 

Grown single-hearted, 
They ply their watery tasks. 



9o 



96 THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 

At sunrise they leap 

From their cradles steep 
In the cave of the shelving hill ; 

At noontide they flow 

Through the woods below, 
And the meadows of Asphodel ; 

And at night they sleep 

In the rocking deep 
Beneath the Ortygian shore ; — 

Like spirits that lie 

In the azure sky, 
When they love, but live no more. 



THE COTTERS SATURDAY NIGHT. — Burns. 

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESO,. 

My loved, my honored, much respected friend ! 

No mercenary bard his homage pays ; 
With honest pride I scorn each selfish end : 

My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise : 
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, 

The lowly train in life's sequestered scene ; 
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways ; 

What Aiken in a cottage would have been ; 
Ah ! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I 
ween ! 

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ; 

The shortening winter-day is near a close ; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh, 

The blackening trains o' craws to their repose : 



THE COTTER S SATURDAY NIGHT. 



97 



The toil-worn cotter frae his labor goes, — 

This night his weekly moil is at an end, — 
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, 
And weary o'er the moor his course does homeward 
bend. 

At length his lonely cot appears in view, 

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; 
Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin', stacher thro' 

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise and glee. 
His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily, 

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wine's smile, 
The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 

Does all his weary, karking care beguile, 
An' makes him quite forget his labor an' his toil. 

Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, 

At service out, among the farmers roun' ; 
Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin 

A cannie errand to a neebor town : 
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, 

In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, 
Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw new gown, 

Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee, 
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 

With joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet, 

An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers : 
The social hours, swift- winged, unnoticed fleet ; 

Each tells the unco's that he sees or hears ; 
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ; 

Anticipation forward points the view. 
The mother, wi' her needle an' her shears, 

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new ; 
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. 
7 



98 



THE COTTER S SATURDAY NIGHT. 



Their master's an' their mistress's command 

The younkers a' are warned to obey ; 
And mind their labors wi' an eydent hand, 

An' ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk or play : 
u And, O, be sure to fear the Lord alway ! 

And mind your duty, duly, morn and night! 
Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, 

Implore his counsel and assisting might : 
They never sought in vain, that sought the Lord 
aright ! " 

But, hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ; 

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, 
Tells how a nee bo r lad cam o'er the moor, 

To do some errands, and convoy her hame. 
The wily mother sees the conscious flame 

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ; 
With heart-struck, anxious care inquires his name, 

While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak ; 
Weel pleased the mother hears, it 's nae wild, worth- 
less rake. 

Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben ; 

A strappan youth ; he takes the mother's eye ; 
Blythe Jenny sees the visit 's no ill-ta'en ; 

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. 
The youngster's artless heart o'erflows with joy, 

But blate and laithfu', scarce can weel behave ; 
The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy 

What makes the youth sae bashfu' and sae grave ; 
Weel pleased to think her bairn 's respected like the 
lave. 

happy love, where love like this is found ! 

O heart-felt raptures ! bliss beyond compare ! 

1 've paced much this weary, mortal round, 

And sage experience bids me this declare : — 



THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 99 

" If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, 

One cordial, in this melancholy vale, 
'T is when a youthful, loving, modest pair, 
In other's arms breathe out the tender tale, 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening 
gale." 

Is there, in human form, that bears a heart, — 

A wretch ! a villain ! lost to love and truth ! — 
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art, 

Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth ? 
Curse on his perjured arts ! dissembling smooth ! 

Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exiled ? 
Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, 

Points to the parents fondling o'er their child, — 
Then paints the ruined maid, and their distraction 
wild ? 

But now the supper crowns their simple board, 

The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food ; 
The soup their only hawkie does afford, 

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood : 
The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, 

To grace the lad, her weel-hained kebbuck fell, 
An' aft he 's pressed, an' aft he ca's it guid ; 

The frugal wifie garrulous will tell, 
How was a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell. 

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face, 

They round the ingle form a circle wide ; 
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace, 

The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride ; 
His bonnet reverently is laid aside, 

His lyart hafFets wearing thin an' bare ; 
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 

He wales a portion with judicious care ; 
And " Let us worship God ! " he says, with solemn 
air. 



100 THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 

They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; 

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim ; 
Perhaps " Dundee's " wild -warbling measures rise, 

Or plaintive " Martyrs," worthy of the name ; 
Or noble " Elgin "-beats the heavenward flame, 

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays : 
Compared with these, Italian trills are tame ; 

The tickled ear no heart-felt raptures raise ; 
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise. 

The priest-like father reads the sacred page, — 

How Abram was the friend of God on high ; 
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage 

With Amalek's ungracious progeny ; 
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie 

Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire ; 
Or Job's pathetic plaint and wailing cry ; 

Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire ; 
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. 

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, — 

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed ; 
How He, who bore in heaven the second name, 

Had not on earth whereon to lay his head ; 
How his first followers and servants sped, 

The precepts sage they wrote to many a land ; 
How he who lone in Patmos banished 

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, 
And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by 
Heaven's command. 

Then kneeling down, to heaven's eternal King, 
The saint, the father, and the husband prays : 

Hope " springs exulting on triumphant wing," 
That thus they all shall meet in future days ; 



THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 101 

There ever bask in uncreated rays 

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, 

Together hymning their Creator's praise, 
In such society, yet still more dear, 
While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere. 

Compared with this, how poor religion's pride, 

In all the pomp of method and of art, 
When men display to congregations wide 

Devotion's every grace except the heart ! 
The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, 

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; 
But haply, in some cottage far apart, 

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul ; 
And in his book of life the inmates poor enroll. 

Then homeward all take off their several way ; 

The youngling cottagers retire to rest ; 
The parent-pair their secret homage pay, 

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request, 
That He, who stills the raven's clamorous nest, 

And decks the lily fair in flowery pride, 
Would, in the way his wisdom sees the best, 

For them and for their little ones provide ; 
But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside. 

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad : 
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 

" An honest man 's the noblest work of God " ; 
And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road, 

The cottage leaves the palace far behind ; 
What is a lordling's pomp ? a cumbrous load, 

Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, 
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined ! 



102 DISDAIN RETURNED. 

O Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent ! 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet con- 
tent ! 
And, O, may Heaven their simple lives prevent 

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! 
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, 
A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved 
isle. 

Thou, who poured the patriotic tide 

That streamed through Wallace's undaunted 
heart ; 
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride, 

Or nobly die, the second glorious part, 
(The patriot's God, peculiarly thou art, 

His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward !) 
O, never, never, Scotia's realm desert , 

But still the patriot, and the patriot bard, 
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard ! 



DISDAIN RETURNED. — Carew. 

He that loves a rosie cheek, 

Or a coral lip admires, 

Or from star-like eyes doth seek 

Fuel to maintain his fires ; 

As old Time makes these decay, 

So his flames must waste away. 



LAKE, WITH LAWNY BANKS THAT SLOPE. 103 

But a smooth and steadfast mind, 
Gentle thoughts and calm desires, 
Hearts with equal love combined, 
Kindle never-dying fires. 
Where these are not, 1 despise 
Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes. 



LAKE, WITH LAWNY BANKS THAT SLOPE. 

" Lake, with lawny banks that slope 

To the water's edge, 
Softly rustles the wind thro' 

Thy long grass and sedge. 

" Thou hadst been a gem of earth 

Couched amid these hills, 
But some evil water-sprite 

Troubles the poor rills 

" Whence thy hidden life is drawn. 

Why thus fretteth he, 
Who should be thy good genie, 

Thy tranquillity ? " 

Lightly by a ruffling wind 

Were the waters pressed, 
And a liquid, swaying voice 

Issued from their breast. 

Be it genie, be it fate, 

I know not, — but know 
That the waves from yonder stream 

Ever turbid flow. 



104 



LAKE, WITH LAWNY BANK3 THAT SLOPE. 

Earth may smile like Eden round, 

Heaven may open blue, 
Child of sullied parentage 

Gives not back their hue. 



" Stream, that feed'st the lake, there beams 

On thee a living sun ; 
Rapid, dark, thou rushest by ; 

Wouldst thou doom outrun ? " 

Hoarsely thus the hurrying wave 

Answered, foaming on, 
" Suns may beam, or skies may lower, 

I may stay for none. 

" I am fed by those that draw 

From depths hid from me 
Their mysterious energies, 

And I am not free. 



" Peaceful mission is not mine ; 

Springs that give me life 
Burst from this strange earth, as if 

Born with inward strife." 

" Turbid lake, thou must flow on, 

There is no redress, 
And the river fed by thee 

Know unworthiness." 

ignorant, I grieved to see 

Nothing could be pure, 
All must be as all had been, 

While it should endure. 



DEEP, DEEP WITHIN THE OCEAN'S BREAST. 105 

I came again, — a river, 

Princely, calm, and clear, 
Flowed from out the troubled lake, 

Like pure love from fear. 

Heaven and earth were showed therein, 

The dark source denied 
To the ocean's large embrace 

Sent a noble child. 



DEEP, DEEP WITHIN THE OCEAN'S BREAST. 

Deep, deep within the ocean's breast 

A coral isle was shrined, 
Round which light, water-swayed nymphs 

Float with white arms entwined. 



The centre of this little isle 

Was fixed a stony tree ; 
An outer growth encircled this, 

Like foliage, quiveringly. 

In rigid pride the coral stone 

Surveyed its firm estate, 
And said, with gratulating tone, 

" I floated, too, of late. 

u But now no chance or change can come 

To me ; mature in form, 
I take my place with things of fate ; 

I cool no more nor warm. 



106 



ISABEL. 

" Yes, I have been the sport of waves, 

And like this mass around 
I toiled and felt, — nor knew the rest, 

Blest Neptune ! which I 've found. 

" Come, all of ye Sea-Nymphs, admire 

My beautiful repose ! " — 
Out gushed the voice of one Sea-Nymph, - 

" Give me the form which grows. 

" I better please myself to watch 

Life than a handsome death, 
And, born of a quick element, 

Like something which has breath. 

" So, I '11 just feast my eyes awhile 

On what goes on round you, 
And never tire of watching this 

Till it grows stony too." 

How in the ocean's deepest depth 

Is human life repeated ! 
By coral beds, who 've done with change, 

How hardly youth is greeted ! 



ISABEL. — Tennyson. 

Eyes not down-dropped nor over-bright, but fed 
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity, — 
Clear, without heat, undying, tended by 
Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane 



ISABEL. 107 

Of her still spirit, — locks not wide dispread, 
Madonna-wise on either side her head, — 

Sweet lips, whereon perpetually did reign 
The summer calm of golden charity, 
Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood, 

Revered Isabel, the crown and head, 
The stately flower of female fortitude, 

Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead. 

The intuitive decision of a bright 

And thorough-edged intellect, to part 

Error from crime, — a prudence to withhold, 

The laws of marriage charactered in gold 
Upon the blanched tablets of her heart, — 
A love still burning upward, giving light 
To read those laws, — an accent very low 
In blandishment, but a most silver flow 

Of subtle-paced counsel in distress, 
Right to the heart and brain, though undescried, 

Winning its way with extreme gentleness 
Thro' all the outworks of suspicious pride, — 
A courage to endure and to obey, — 
A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway, 
Crowned Isabel, thro' all her placid life, 
The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife. 

The mellowed reflex of a winter moon, — 
A clear stream flowing with a muddy one, 
Till in its onward current it absorbs 

With swifter movement and in purer light 

The vexed eddies of its wayward brother, — 
A leaning and upbearing parasite, 
Clothing the stem, which else had fallen quite, 
With clustered flower-bells and ambrosial orbs 
Of rich fruit-bunches leaning on each other, 
Shadow forth thee : — the world hath not 
another 



108 SUNDAY. 

(Though all her fairest forms are types of thee, 
And thou of God in thy great charity) 
Of such a finished, chastened purity. 



SUNDAY. — Herbert. 

• 

O day most calm, most bright ! 
The fruit of this, the next world's bud ; 
The endorsement of supreme delight, 
Writ by a friend, and with his blood ; 
The couch of time ; care's balm and bay 
The week were dark but for thy light ; 

Thy torch doth show the way. 

The other days and thou 
Make up one man ; whose face thou art, 
Knocking at heaven with thy brow : 
The working days are the back-part ; 
The burden of the week lies there, 
Making the whole to stoop and bow, 

Till thy release appear. 

Man had straight forward gone 
To endless death. But thou dost pull 
And turn us round, to look on one, 
Whom, if we were not very dull, 
We could not choose but look on still ; 
Since there is no place so alone 

The which he doth not fill. 

Sundays the pillars are 
On which heaven's palace arched lies : 



HYMN OF PAN. 109 

The other days fill up the spare 
And hollow room with vanities. 
They are the fruitful beds and borders 
In God's rich garden ; that is bare 

Which parts their ranks and orders. 



HYMN OF FAN.— Shelley. 

From the forests and highlands 

We come, we come ; 
From the river-girt islands, 

Where loud waves are dumb, 
Listening to my. sweet pipings. 
The wind in the reeds and rushes, 

The bees on the bells of thyme, 
The birds on the myrtle-bushes, 

The cicale above in the lime, 
And the lizards below in the grass, 
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

Liquid Peneus was flowing, 

And all dark Tempe lay 
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 

The light of the dying day, 
Speeded by my sweet pipings. 
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, 
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, 

And the brink of the dewy caves, 
And all that did then attend and follow, 
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, 
With envy of my sweet pipings. 



110 



L ALLEGRO. 



I sang of the dancing stars, 

I sang of the daedal earth, 
And of heaven, and the giant wars, 

And love, and death, and birth ; 
And then I changed my pipings, — 
Singing how down the vale of Menalus 

1 pursued a maiden and clasped a reed : 
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus ! 

It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed 
All wept, as I think both ye now would, 
If envy or age had not frozen your blood, 
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. 



L' ALLEGRO. — Milton. 

Hence, loathed Melancholy, 

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born ! 
In Stygian cave forlorn, 

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights un- 
holy, 
Find out some uncouth cell, 

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, 
And the night raven sings ; 

There, under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks, 
As ragged as thy locks,- 

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 
But come, thou Goddess, fair and free, 
In heaven ycleped Euphrosyne, 
And by men, heart-easing Mirth ! 
Whom lovely Venus at a birth, 
With two sister Graces more, 
To ivy -crowned Bacchus bore ; 
Or whether (as some sages sing) 
The frolic wind that breathes the spring, 



l'allegro. Ill 

Zephyr with Aurora playing, 
As he met her once a Maying ; 
There, on beds of violets blue, 
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, 
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, 
So buxom, blithe, and debonair. 

Haste, then, Nymph, and bring with thee 
Jest, and youthful Jollity, 
Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 
Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, 
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 
And love to live in dimple sleek ; 
Sport that wrinkled love derides, 
And Laughter holding both his sides ! 
Come, and trip it as you go, 
On the light, fantastic toe ; 
And in thy right hand lead with thee 
The mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty ; 
And if I give thee honor due, 
Mirth, admit me of thy crew, 
To live with her, and live with thee, 
In unreproved pleasures free ; 
To hear the lark begin his flight, 
And, singing, startle the dull night, 
From his watch-tower in the skies, 
Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 
Then to come, in spite of sorrow, 
And at my window bid good morrow, 
Through the sweet-brier, or the vine, 
Or the twisted eglantine : 
While the cock, with lively din, 
Scatters the rear of darkness thin, 
And to the stack, or the barn-door, 
Stoutly struts his dames before. 
Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, 



112 



From the side of some hoar hill, 

Through the high wood echoing shrill. 

Some time walking, not unseen, 

By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, 

Right against the eastern gate, 

Where the great sun begins his state, 

Robed in flames and amber light, 

The clouds in thousand liveries dight ; 

While the ploughman near at hand 

Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 

And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 

And the mower whets his scythe, 

And every shepherd tells his tale 

Under the hawthorn in the dale. 

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, 

Whilst the landscape round it measures : 

Russet lawns, and fallows gray, 

Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; 

Mountains, on whose barren breast 

The laboring clouds do often rest ; 

Meadows trim, with daisies pied, 

Shallow brooks, and rivers wide. 

Towers and battlements it sees 

Bosomed high in tufted trees, 

Where perhaps some beauty lies, 

The cynosure of neighbouring eyes. 

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes, 

From betwixt two aged oaks, 

Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met, 

Are at their savory dinner set, 

Of herbs, and other country messes, 

Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses ; 

And then in haste her bower she leaves, 

With Thestylis to bind the sheaves ; 

Or, if the earlier season lead, 

To the tanned haycock in the mead, 



i/allegro. 113 

Sometimes with secure delight 
The upland hamlets will invite, 
When the merry bells ring round, 
And the jocund rebecks sound 
To many a youth and many a maid, 
Dancing in the checkered shade ; 
And young and old come forth to play, 
On a sunshine holiday, 
Till the livelong daylight fail ; 
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 
With stories told of many a feat, 
How fairy Mab the junkets eat ; 
She was pinched, and pulled, she said, 
And he by friars' lanthorn led 
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat, 
To earn his cream-bowl duly set, 
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, 
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn, 
That ten day-laborers could not end ; 
Then lies him down the lubber fiend, 
And, stretched out all the chimney's length, 
Basks at the fire his hairy strength, 
And crop-full out of doors he flings, 
Ere the first cock his matin rings. 
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep. 
Towered cities please us then, 
And the busy hum of men, 
Where throngs of knights and barons bold 
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, 
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
Rain influence, and judge the prize 
Of wit or arms, while both contend 
To win her grace whom all commend. 
There let Hymen oft appear 
In saffron robe, with taper clear, 
8 



114 



IL PENSEROSO. 



And pomp, and feast, and revelry, 
With mask, and antique pageantry, 
Such sights as youthful poets dream 
On summer eves by haunted stream. 
Then to the well trod stage anon, 
If Jonson's learned sock be on, 
Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child, 
Warble his native wood-notes wild. 

And ever against eating cares, 
Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 
Married to immortal verse ; 
Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 
In notes, with many a winding bout 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out, 
With wanton heed and giddy cunning, 
The melting voice through mazes running, 
Untwisting all the chains that tie 
The hidden soul of harmony ; 
That Orpheus' self may heave his head 
From golden slumber on a bed 
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear 
Such strains as would have won the ear 
Of Pluto to have set quite free 
His half- regained Eurydice. 

These delights if thou canst give, 
Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 



IL PENSEROSO.— Milton. 

Hence, vain, deluding joys, 

The brood of folly, without father bred ! 
How little you bestead, 

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys ! 



IL PENSEROSO. 



115 



Dwell in some idle brain, 

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, 

As thick and numberless 

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, 

Or likest hovering dreams, 

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. 
But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy ! 
Hail, divinest Melancholy ! 
Whose saintly visage is too bright 
To hit the sense of human sight, 
And therefore to our weaker view 
O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue ; 
Black, but such as in esteem 
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, 
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove 
To set her beauty's praise above 
The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended : 
Yet thou art higher far descended ; 
Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore, 
To solitary Saturn bore ; 
His daughter she (in Saturn's reign 
Such mixture was not held a stain) : 
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades 
He met her, and in secret shades 
Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
While yet there was no fear of Jove. 
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, 
Sober, steadfast, and demure, 
All in a robe of darkest grain, 
Flowing with majestic train, 
And sable stole of Cyprus lawn 
Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
Come, but keep thy wonted state, 
With even step, and musing gait, 
And looks commercing with the skies, 
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes : 



116 IL PENSEROSO. 

There held in holy passion still, 

Forget thyself to marble, till 

With a sad, leaden, downward cast 

Thou fix them on the earth as fast ; 

And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet, 

Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, 

And hears the Muses in a ring 

Aye round about Jove's altar sing ; 

And add to these retired Leisure, 

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ; 

But first and chiefest, with thee bring 

Him that yon soars on golden wing, 

Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, 

The cherub Contemplation ; 

And the mute Silence hist along, 

'Less Philomel will deign a song, 

In her sweetest, saddest plight, 

Smoothing the rugged brow of night, 

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke, 

Gently o'er the accustomed oak. 

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, 

Most musical, most melancholy ! 

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among 

I woo, to hear thy even-song ; 

And, missing thee, I walk unseen 

On the dry smooth-shaven green, 

To behold the wandering moon, 

Riding near her highest noon, 

Like one that had been led astray 

Through the heaven's wide, pathless way ; 

And oft, as if her head she bowed, 

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, 

I hear the far-off curfew sound 

Over some wide-watered shore, 

Swinging slow with sullen roar ; 



IL PENSEROSO. 

Or, if the air will not permit, 
Some still, removed place will fit, 
Where glowing embers through the room 
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom ; 
Far from all resort of mirth, 
Save the cricket on the hearth, 
Or the bellman's drowsy charm, 
To bless the doors from nightly harm ; 
Or let my lamp at midnight hour 
Be seen in some high, lonely tower, 
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, 
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere 
The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
What worlds or what vast regions hold 
The immortal mind that hath forsook 
Her mansion in this fleshly nook : 
And of those Demons that are found 
In fire, air, flood, or under ground, 
Whose power hath a true consent 
With planet, or with element. 
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 
In sceptred pall come sweeping by, 
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops 1 line, 
Or the tale of Troy divine, 
Or what (though rare) of later age 
Ennobled hath the buskined stage. 
But, O sad Virgin, that thy power 
Might raise Musaeus from his bower ; 
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
Such notes as, warbled to the string, 
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 
And made Hell grant what love did seek ; 
Or call up him that left half told 
The story of Cambuscan bold, 
Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 
And who had Canace to wife, 



117 



118 IL PENSEROSO. 

That owned the virtuous ring and glass, 

And of the wondrous horse of brass, 

On which the Tartar king did ride ; 

And if aught else great bards beside 

In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 

Of turneys and of trophies hung, 

Of forests, and enchantments drear, 

Where more is meant than meets the ear ! 

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, 

Till civil-suited Morn appear, 

Not tricked and frounced as she was wont 

With the Attic boy to hunt, 

But kerchiefed in a comely cloud, 

While rocking winds are piping loud, 

Or ushered with a shower still, 

When the gust hath blown his fill, 

Ending on the rustling leaves, 

With minute drops from off the eaves. 

And when the sun begins to fling 

His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring 

To arched walks of twilight groves, 

And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, 

Of pine, or monumental oak, 

Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke, 

Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, 

Or fright them from their hallowed haunt : 

There, in close covert, by some brook, 

Where no profaner eye may look, 

Hide me from day's garish eye, 

While the bee with honeyed thigh, 

That at her flowery work doth sing, 

And the waters murmuring 

With such consort as they keep, 

Entice the dewy-feathered sleep ; 

And let some strange, mysterious dream 

Wave at his wings in aery stream 



IL PENSEROSO. 

Of lively portraiture displayed, 

Softly on my eyelids laid ; 

And as I wake, sweet music breathe 

Above, about, or underneath, 

Sent by some spirit to mortals good, 

Or the unseen Genius of the wood. 

But let my due feet never fail 

To walk the studious cloisters pale, 

And love the high em bowed roof, 

With antic pillars massy proof, 

And storied windows richly dight, 

Casting a dim, religious light : 

There let the pealing organ blow, 

To the full -voiced choir below, 

In service high, and anthems clear, 

As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 

Dissolve me into ecstasies, 

And bring all heaven before mine eyes. 

And may at last my weary age 

Find out the peaceful hermitage, 

The hairy gown and mossy cell, 

Where I may sit and rightly spell 

Of every star that heaven doth show, 

And every herb that sips the dew ; 

Till old experience do attain 

To something like prophetic strain. 

These pleasures, Melancholy, give, 
And I with thee will choose to live. 



119 



120 WHY THUS LONGING ? 



WHY THUS LONGING? — Miss Winsloic. 

Why thus longing, thus for ever sighing, 
For the far-off, unattained, and dim ; 

While the beautiful, all round thee lying, 
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn ? 

Wouldst thou listen to its gentle teaching, 
All thy restless yearnings it would still ; 

Leaf, and flower, and laden bee are preaching, 
Thine own sphere, though humble, first to fill. 

Poor indeed thou must be, if around thee 
Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw ; 

If no silken cord of love hath bound thee 
To some little world through weal and woe ; 

If no dear eyes thy fond love can brighten, — 
No fond voices answer to thine own ; 

If no brother's sorrow thou canst lighten 
By daily sympathy and gentle tone. 

Not by deeds that win the crowd's applauses, 
Not by works that give thee world-renown, 

Not by martyrdom, or vaunted crosses, 

Canst thou win and wear the immortal crown. 

Daily struggling, though unloved and lonely, 
Every day a rich reward will give ; 

Thou wilt find, by hearty striving only, 
And truly loving, thou canst truly live. 



VANITY. 



121 



Dost thou revel in the rosy morning, 
When all nature hails the Lord of light, 

And his smile, the mountain-tops adorning, 
Robes yon fragrant fields in radiance bright ? 

Other hands may grasp the field and forest, 
Proud proprietors in pomp may shine ; 

But with fervent love if thou adorest, 

Thou art wealthier, — all the world is thine ! 

Yet if through earth's wide domains thou rovest, 
Sighing that they are not thine alone, — 

Not those fair fields, but thyself, thou lovest, 
And their beauty and thy wealth is gone. 

Nature wears the colors of the spirit, 
Sweetly to her worshipper she sings, — 

All the glow, the grace, she doth inherit, 
Round her trusting child she fondly flings. 



VANITY. — Herbert. 

The fleet astronomer can bore 
And thread the spheres with his quick-piercing mind. 
He views their stations ; walks from door to door ; 

Surveys, as if he had designed 
To make a purchase there. He sees their dances ; 

And knoweth, long before, 
Both their full-eyed aspects and secret glances. 

The nimble diver with his side 
Cuts through the working waves, that he may fetch 
His dearly earned pearl, which God did hide 

On purpose from the venturous wretch, 



122 



THE CLOUD. 



That he might save his life, — and also her's 

Who, with excessive pride, 
Her own destruction and his danger wears. 

The subtle chymic can divest 
And strip the creature naked, till he find 
The callow principles within their nest. 

There he imparts to them his mind, 
Admitted to their bed-chamber, before 

They appear trim and dressed 
To ordinary suitors at the door. 

What hath not man sought out and found, 
But his dear God ? who yet his glorious law- 
Embosoms in us, mellowing the ground 

With showers and frosts, with love and awe ; 
So that we need not say, " Where 's this command ? " 

Poor man ! thou searchest round 
To find out death, but missest life at hand. 



THE CLOUD. — Leigh Hunt. 



A FRAGMENT. 



As I stood thus, a neighbouring wood of elms 
Was moved, and stirred, and whispered loftily, 
Much like a pomp of warriors with plumed helms, 
When some great general, whom they long to see, 
Is heard behind them, coming in swift dignity ; 
And then there fled by me a rush of air, 
That stirred up all the other foliage there, 
Filling the solitude with panting tongues ; 
At which the pines woke up into their songs, 



THE DRYADS. 



123 



Shaking their choral locks ; and on the place 

There fell a shade, as on an awe-struck face ; 

And overhead, like a portentous rim 

Pulled over the wide world, to make all dim, 

A grave, gigantic cloud came hugely uplifting him. 

It passed with its slow shadow ; and I saw 
Where it went down beyond me on a plain, 
Sloping its dusky ladders of thick rain ; 
And on the mist it made, and blinding awe, 
The sun, reissuing in the opposite sky, 
Struck the all-colored arch of his great eye, 
And the disburdened country laughed again ; 
The leaves were amber ; the sunshine 
Scored on the ground its conquering line ; 
And the quick birds, for scorn of the great cloud, 
Like children after fear, were merry and loud. 



THE DRYADS. — Leigh Hunt. 

These are the tawny Dryads, who love nooks 
Tn the dry depth of oaks ; 
Or feel the air in groves, or pull green dresses 
For their glad heads in rooty wildernesses ; 
Or on the gold turf, o'er the dark lines 
Which the sun makes when he declines, 
Bend their linked dances in and out the pines. 
They tend all forests old, and meeting trees, 
Wood, copse, or queach, or slippery dell o'erhung 
With firs, and with their dusty apples strewn ; 
And let the visiting beams the boughs among, 
And bless the trunks from clingings of disease 
And wasted hearts that to the night- wind groan. 



124 



THE DRYADS. 



They screen the cuckoo when he sings ; and teach 

The mother blackbird how to lead astray 

The unformed spirit of the foolish boy 

From thick to thick, from hedge to bay or beach, 

When he would steal the huddled nest away 

Of yellow bills upgaping for their food, 

And spoil the song of the free solitude. 

And they, at sound of the brute, insolent horn, 

Hurry the deer out of the dewy morn ; 

And take into their sudden laps with joy 

The startled hare that did but peep abroad ; 

And from the trodden road 

Help the bruised hedgehog. And at rest, they love 

The back-turned pheasant, hanging from the tree 

His sunny drapery ; 

And handy squirrel, nibbling hastily ; 

And fragrant hiving bee, 

So happy that he will not move, not he, 

Without a song ; and hidden, loving dove, 

With his deep breath ; and bird of wakeful glen, 

Whose louder song is like the voice of life, 

Triumphant o'er death's image, but whose deep, 

Low, lovelier note is like a gentle wife, 

A poor, a pensive, yet a happy one, 

Stealing, when daylight's common tasks are done, 

An hour for mother's work, and singing low 

While her tired husband and her children sleep. 



MAN. 125 



MAN. — Herbert. 

My God, I heard this day, 
That none doth build a stately habitation, 
But he that means to dwell therein. 
What house more stately hath there been, 
Or can be, than is Man ? to whose creation 
All things are in decay. 

For Man is every thing, 
And more. He is a tree, yet bears no fruit ; 
A beast, yet is, or should be, more. 
Reason and speech we only bring. 
Parrots may thank us, if they are not mute ; 
They go upon the score. 

Man is all symmetry, 
Full of proportions, one limb to another, 
And all to all the world besides. 
Each part may call the farthest brother : 
For head with foot hath private amity ; 
And both with moons and tides. 

Nothing hath got so far, 
But Man hath caught and kept it, as his prey. 
His eyes dismount the highest star ; 
He is, in little, all the sphere. 
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
Find their acquaintance there. 

For us the winds do blow, 
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains 
flow. 



126 MAN. 

Nothing we see but means our good, 
As our delight, or as our treasure ; 
The whole is either our cupboard of food, 
Or cabinet of pleasure. 

The stars have us to bed ; 
Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws. 
Music and light attend our head. 
All things unto our flesh are kind, 
In their descent and being ; to our mind, 
In their ascent and cause. 

Each thing is full of duty : 
Waters united are our navigation ; 
Distinguished, our habitation ; 
Below, our drink ; above, our meat ; 
Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty ? 
Then how all things are neat ! 

More servants wait on Man 
Than he '11 take notice of. In every path 
He treads down that which doth befriend him 
When sickness makes him pale and wan. 
O, mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath 
Another to attend him. 

Since, then, my God, thou hast 
So brave a palace built, O, dwell in it, 
That it may dwell with thee at last ! 
Till then, afford us so much wit, 
That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee ; 
And both thy servants be. 



TO A SKYLARK. 



127 



TO A SKYLARK. — Shelley. 

Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 

Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest 
Like a cloud of fire ; 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 

Thou dost float and run ; 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight ; 
Like a star of heaven, 

In the broad daylight 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. 

Keen as are the arrows 

Of that silver sphere 
Whose intense lamp narrows 

In the white dawn clear, 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 



128 



TO A SKYLARK. 



All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over- 
flowed. 

What thou art we know not ; 

What is most like thee ? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 

Drops so bright to see, 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 

Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not ; 

Like a highborn maiden 

In a palace tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 
Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower ; 

Like a glowworm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from 
the view ; 

Like a rose embowered 

In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflowered, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged 
thieves. 



TO A SKYLARK. 129 

Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers, 

All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine ; 
I have never heard 

Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Chorus hymeneal, 

Or triumphant chant, 
Matched with thine, would be all 

But an empty vaunt, — 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want- 

What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain ? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 
What shapes of sky or plain ? 
What love of thine own kind ? What ignorance of 
pain ? 

With thy clear, keen joyance 

Languor cannot be : 
Shadow of annoyance 

Never came near thee : 
Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 

Waking or asleep, 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 

Than we mortals dream, 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 

9 



130 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 



We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 
thought. 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
If we were things born 

Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 

Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 

That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 

From my lips would flow, 
The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. — Byron. 

A FABLE. 



SONNET ON CHILLON. 



Eternal spirit of the chainless mind ! 
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art ! 
For there thy habitation is the heart, — 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 131 

The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; 
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned, — 

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 

Their country conquers with their martyrdom, 

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 
Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place, 

And thy sad floor an altar, — for 't was trod, 

Until his very steps have left a trace 
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 

By Bonnivard ! — May none those marks efface ! 

For they appeal from tyranny to God. 



My hair is gray, but not with years ; 
Nor grew it white 
In a single night, 
As men's have grown from sudden fears : 
My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, 

But rusted with a vile repose ; 
For they have been a dungeon's spoil, 

And mine has been the fate of those 
To whom the goodly earth and air 
Are banned and barred, forbidden fare : 
But this was for my father's faith 
I suffered chains and courted death ; 
That father perished at the stake 
For tenets he would not forsake ; 
And for the same his lineal race 
In darkness found a dwelling-place ; 
We were seven, who now are one, — 

Six in youth, and one in age, 
Finished as they had begun, 

Proud of Persecution's rage ; 
One in fire, and two in field, 
Their belief with blood have sealed, 



132 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 

Dying as their father died, 
For the God their foes denied ; 
Three were in a dungeon cast, 
Of whom this wreck is left the last. 

ii. 

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould 
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, 
There are seven columns, massy and gray, 
Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, 
A sunbeam which hath lost its way, 
And through the crevice and the cleft 
Of the thick wall is fallen and left, 
Creeping o'er the floor so damp, 
Like a marsh's meteor lamp : 
And in each pillar there is a ring, 

And in each ring there is a chain ; 
That iron is a cankering thing, 

For in these limbs its teeth remain, 
With marks that will not wear away, 
Till I have done with this new day, 
Which now is painful to these eyes, 
Which have not seen the sun so rise 
For years, — I cannot count them o'er, 
I lost their long and heavy score 
When my last brother drooped and died, 
And I lay living by his side. 

in. 

They chained us each to a column stone, 
And we were three, — yet each alone : 
We could not move a single pace, 
We could not see each other's face, 
But with that pale and livid light 
That made us strangers in our sight. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 133 

And thus together, yet apart, 

Fettered in hand, but pined in heart, 

'T was still some solace, in the dearth 

Of the pure elements of earth, 

To hearken to each other's speech, 

And each turn comforter to each 

With some new hope, or legend old, 

Or song heroically bold ; 

But even these at length grew cold. 

Our voices took a dreary tone, 

An echo of the dungeon-stone, 

A grating sound, — not full and free, 
As they of yore were wont to be ; 
It might be fancy, — but to me 

They never sounded like our own. 

IV. 

I was the eldest of the three, 

And, to uphold and cheer, the rest, 
I ought to do, and did, my best, — 

And each did well in his degree. 

The youngest, whom my father loved, 

Because our mother's brow was given 

To him, with eyes as blue as heaven, — 
For him my soul was sorely moved ; 

And truly might it be distressed 

To see such bird in such a nest ; 

For he was beautiful as day, — 
(When day was beautiful to me 
As to young eagles, being free,) — 
A polar day, which will not see 

A sunset till its summer 's gone, 
Its sleepless summer of long light, 

The snow-clad offspring of the sun : 
And thus he was as pure and bright, 

And in his natural spirit gay, 



134 THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 

With tears for naught but others' ills, 
And then they flowed like mountain rills, 
Unless he could assuage the woe 
Which he abhorred to view below. 



v. 



The other was as pure of mind, 
But formed to combat with his kind ; 
Strong in his frame, and of a mood 
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, 
And perished in the foremost rank 

With joy : — but not in chains to pine ; 
His spirit withered with their clank, 

I saw it silently decline, — 

And so perchance in sooth did mine ; 
But yet I forced it on to cheer 
Those relics of a home so dear. 
He was a hunter of the hills, 

Had followed there the deer and wolf; 

To him this dungeon was a gulf, 
And fettered feet the worst of ills. 



VI. 



Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls, — 
A thousand feet in depth below, 
Its massy waters meet and flow ; 
Thus much the fathom-line was sent 
From Chillon's snow-white battlement, 

Which round about the wave enthralls : 
A double dungeon wall and wave 
Have made, — and like a living grave. 
Below the surface of the lake 
The dark vault lies wherein we lay, — 
We heard it ripple night and day ; 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 135 

Sounding o'er our heads it knocked ; 

And I have felt the winter's spray 

Wash through the bars, when winds were high 

And wanton in the happy sky ; 

And then the very rock hath rocked, 
And I have felt it shake, unshocked, 

Because I could have smiled to see 

The death that would have set me free. 

VII. 

I said my nearer brother pined, 
I said his mighty heart declined, 
He loathed and put away his food ; 
It was not that 't was coarse and rude, 
For we were used to hunter's fare, 
And for the like had little care : 
The milk drawn from the mountain goat 
Was changed for water from the moat ; 
Our bread was such as captives' tears 
Have moistened many a thousand years, 
Since man first pent his fellow-men 
Like brutes within an iron den : 
But what were these to us or him ? 
These wasted not his heart or limb ; 
My brother's soul was of that mould 
Which in a palace had grown cold, 
Had his free breathing been denied 
The range of the steep mountain's side : 
But why delay the truth ? — he died. 
I saw, and could not hold his head, 
Nor reach his dying hand, — nor dead ; 
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, 
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. 
He died, — and they unlocked his chain, 
And scooped for him a shallow grave 
Even from the cold earth of our cave. 



136 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 

I begged them, as a boon, to lay 
His corse in dust whereon the day 
Might shine, — it was a foolish thought, 
But then within my brain it wrought, 
That even in death his freeborn breast 
In such a dungeon could not rest. 
I might have spared my idle prayer, — 
They coldly laughed, — and laid him there, 
The flat and turfiess earth above 
The being we so much did love ; 
His empty chain above it leant, 
Such murder's fitting monument ! 

VIII. 

But he, the favorite and the flower, 
Most cherished since his natal hour, 
His mother's image in fair face, 
The infant love of all his race, 
His martyred father's dearest thought, 
My latest care, for whom I sought 
To hoard my life, that his might be 
Less wretched now, and one day free ; 
He, too, who yet had held untired 
A spirit natural or inspired, — 
He, too, was struck, and day by day 
Was withered on the stalk away. 

God ! it is a fearful thing 

To see the human soul take wing 
In any shape, in any mood : — 

1 Ve seen it rushing forth in blood, 
I 've seen it on the breaking ocean 
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion, 
I 've seen the sick and ghastly bed 
Of sin delirious with its dread : 

But these were horrors ; — this was woe 
Unmixed with such, — but sure and slow. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 137 

He faded, and so calm and meek, 

So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 

So tearless, yet so tender, — kind, 

And grieved for those he left behind ; 

With all the while a cheek whose bloom 

Was as a mockery of the tomb, 

Whose tints as gently sunk away 

As a departing rainbow's ray, — 

An eye of most transparent light, 

That almost made the dungeon bright. 

And not a word of murmur, not 

A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 

A little talk of better davs, 

A little hope my own to raise ; 

For I was sunk in silence, — lost 

In this last loss, of all the most. 

And then the sighs he would suppress, 

Of fainting nature's feebleness, 

More slowly drawn, grew less and less : 

I listened, but I could not hear, — 

I called, for I was wild with fear ; 

I knew 't was hopeless, but my dread 

Would not be thus admonished ; 

I called, and thought I heard a sound, — 

I burst my chain with one strong bound, 

And rushed to him : — I found him not, — 

I only stirred in this black spot, 

J only lived, /only drew 

The accursed breath of dungeon-dew ; 

The last, the sole, the dearest link 

Between me and the eternal brink, 

Which bound me to my failing race, 

Was broken in this fatal place. 

One on the earth, and one beneath, — 

My brothers, — both had ceased to breathe : 

I took that hand which lay so still, 

Alas ! my own was full as chill ; 



138 THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 

I had not strength to stir or strive, 
But felt that I was still alive, — 
A frantic feeling, when we know 
That what we love shall ne'er be so. 

I know not why 

I could not die ; 
% I had no earthly hope, — but faith, 
And that forbade a selfish death. 

IX. 

What next befell me then and there 
I know not well, — I never knew ; 
First came the loss of light, and air, 

And then of darkness too : 
I had no thought, no feeling, — none ; 
Among the stones I stood a stone, 
And was, scarce conscious what I wist, 
As shrubless crags within the mist : 
For all was blank, and bleak, and gray, 
It was not night, it was not day, 
It was not even the dungeon-light, 
So hateful to my heavy sight, 
But vacancy absorbing space, 
And fixedness — without a place ; 
There were no stars, — no earth, — no time, — 
No check, — no change, — no good, — no 

crime, — 
But silence, and a stirless breath 
Which neither was of life nor death ; 
A sea of stagnant idleness, 
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless. 

x. 

A light broke in upon my brain, — 

It was the carol of a bird ; 
It ceased, and then it came again, — 

The sweetest song ear ever heard ; 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 



139 



And mine was thankful till my eyes, 
Ran over with the glad surprise, 
And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of misery. 
But then by dull degrees came back 
My senses to their wonted track : 
I saw the dungeon walls and floor 
Close slowly round me as before ; 
I saw the glimmer of the sun 
Creeping as it before had done, — 
But through the crevice where it came 
That bird was perched, as fond and tame, 

And tamer than upon the tree ; 
A lovely bird, with azure wings, 
And song that said a thousand things, 

And seemed to say them ail for me ! 
I never saw its like before, 
I ne'er shall see its likeness more : 
It seemed like me to want a mate, 
But was not half so desolate, 
And it was come to love me when 
None lived to love me so again, 
And cheering from my dungeon's brink 
Had brought me back to feel and think. 
I know not if it late were free, 

Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 
But knowing well captivity, 

Sweet bird ! I could not wish for thine ; 
Or if it were, in winged guise, 
A visitant from paradise ; 
For — Heaven forgive that thought ! the while 
Which made me both to weep and smile — 
I sometimes deemed that it might be 
My brother's soul come down to me. 
But then at last away it flew, 
And then 't was mortal well I knew ; 



140 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 

For he would never thus have flown, 
And left me twice so douhly lone, — 
Lone as the corse within its shroud, 
Lone as a solitary cloud, 

A single cloud on a sunny day, 
While all the rest of heaven is clear, 
A frown upon the atmosphere, 
That hath no business to appear 

When skies are blue and earth is gay. 

XI. 

A kind of change came in my fate, — 
My keepers grew compassionate : 
I know not what had made them so, 
They were inured to sights of woe, 
But so it was : — my broken chain 
With links unfastened did remain, 
And it was liberty to stride 
Along my cell from side to side, 
And up and down, and then athwart, 
And tread it over every part, 
And round the pillars one by one, 
Returning where my walk begun, — 
Avoiding only, as I trod, 
My brothers' graves without a sod ; 
For if I thought with heedless tread 
My step profaned their lowly bed, 
My breath came gaspingly and thick, 
And my crushed heart fell blind and sick. 

XII. 

I made a footing in the wall, — 
It was not therefrom to escape ; 

For I had buried one and all 

Who loved me in a human shape, 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 141 

And the whole earth would henceforth be 

A wider prison unto me : 

No child, no sire, no kin had I, 

No partner in my misery ; 

I thought of this, and I was glad, 

For thought of them had made me mad ; 

But I was curious to ascend 

To my barred windows, and to bend 

Once more upon the mountains high 

The quiet of a loving eye. 

XIII. 

I saw them, — and they were the same, 
They were not changed like me in frame ; 
I saw their thousand years of snow 
On high, — their wide long lake below, 
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow ; 
I heard the torrents leap and gush 
O'er channelled rock and broken bush ; 
I saw the white-walled distant town, 
And whiter sails go skimming down ; 
And then there was a little isle, 
Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view ; 
A small green isle, — it seemed no more, — 
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor ; 
But in it there were three tall trees, 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, 
And by it there were waters flowing, 
And on it there were young flowers growing 

Of gentle breath and hue. 
The fish swam by the castle wall, 
And they seemed joyous each and all ; 
The eagle rode the rising blast, — 
Methought he never flew so fast 



142 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 

As then to me he seemed to fly, 

And then new tears came in my eye, 

And I felt troubled, — and would fain 

I had not left my recent chain ; 

And when I did descend again, 

The darkness of my dim abode 

Fell on me as a heavy load ; 

It was as is a new-dug grave 

Closing o'er one we sought to save, 

And yet my glance, too much oppressed, 

Had almost need of such a rest. 

XIV. 

It might be months, or years, or days, — 

I kept no count, I took no note, 
I had no hope my eyes to raise, 

And clear them of their dreary mote ; 
At last men came to set me free, — 

I asked not why, and recked not where, 
It was at length the same to me 
Fettered or fetterless to be, 

I learned to love despair. 
And thus when they appeared at last, 
And all my bonds aside were cast, 
These heavy wails to me had grown 
A hermitage, — and all my own ! 
And half I felt as they were come 
To tear me from a second home : 
With spiders I had friendship made, 
And watched them in their sullen trade, 
Had seen the mice by moonlight play, 
And why should I feel less than they ? 
We were all inmates of one place, 
And I, the monarch of each race, 
Had power to kill, — yet, strange to tell, 
In quiet we had learned to dwell ; 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



143 



My very chains and I grew friends, 
So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are : — even I 
Regained my freedom with a sigh. 



SONNET. — J. Blanco White. 

Mysterious night ! when our first parent knew 
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name, 
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, 
This glorious canopy of light and blue ? 

Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, 

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 
Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 
And, lo ! creation widened in man's view. 

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed 
Within thy beams, O sun ? or who could find, 
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, 
That to such countiess orbs thou mad'st us blind ? 

Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife ? 
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life ? 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. — Coleridge. 
PART I. 



An ancient 
mariner 



It is an ancient mariner, 

And he stoppeth one of three. S^ai- 

" By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, !^3? en 

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? an n /de e tain- 



etb one. 



144 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 

" The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 
And I am next of kin ; 
The guests are met, the feast is set : 
May'st hear the merry din." 

He holds him with his skinny hand, 

" There was a ship," quoth he. 

" Hold off! unhand me, graybeard loon ! " 

Eftsoons his hand dropt he. 



dingiest He holds him with his glittering eye, — 
bou^dby The wedding-guest stood still, 
lheofd e 8 °ea- And listens like a three-years' child : 
Ind^r" 1 ' The mariner hath his will. 

strained to 
hear his 

taie. The wedding-guest sat on a stone : 

He cannot choose but hear ; 
And thus spake on that ancient man, 
The bright-eyed mariner. 

The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, 

Merrily did we drop 

Below the kirk, below the hill, 

Below the lighthouse top. 

neASiiST The sun came up upon the left, 
saTed hesh,p Out of the sea came he ; 
wkhTJood And he shone bright, and on the right 
faXweafh- Went down into the sea. 



er, till it 
reached the 
line. 



Higher and higher every day, 
Till over the mast at noon 



The wedding-guest here beat his breast, 
For he heard the loud bassoon. 

din e ^u d e" 8 t The bride hath paced into the hall, 
bri a daimu h . e Red as a rose is she ; 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



145 



Nodding their heads, before her goes 
The merry minstrelsy. 

The wedding-guest he beat his breast, 
Yet he cannot choose but hear ; 
And thus spake on that ancient man, 
The bright-eyed mariner. 

And now the storm-blast came, and he 
Was tyrannous and strong ; 
He struck with his o'ertaking wings, 
And chased us south along. 

With sloping masts and dipping prow, 

As who pursued with yell and blow 

Still treads the shadow of his foe 

And forward bends his head, 

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, 

And southward aye we fled. 

And now there came both mist and snow, 
And it grew wondrous cold ; 
And ice, mast-high, came floating by, 
As green as emerald. 

And through the drifts the snowy clifts 
Did send a dismal sheen ; 
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken : 
The ice was all between. 

The ice was here, the ice was there, 

The ice was all around : 

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, 

Like noises in a swound. 



sic ; but the 
mariner 

continueth 
his tale. 



The ship 
drawn by a 
storm to- 
ward the 
south pole. 



The land of 
ice and of 
fearful 
sounds, 
where no 
living thing 
was to be 
seen. 



At length did cross an albatross, 
Thorough the fog it came : 
10 



Till a gTeat 
sea-bird, 
called the 
albatross, 



146 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



though the As if it had been a Christian soul, 
r/w^e. We hailed it in God's name. 

ceived with 

great joy » . 

and^hospi- it ate the food it neer had eat, 
And round and round it flew. 
The ice did split with a thunder-fit ; 
The helmsman steered us through. 

aibatro°sL the And a good south wind sprung up behind ; 
&d V of h g ood The albatross did follow, 



omen 
followeih 



a t J d And every day, for food or play, 



ureumed Came to the mariner's hollo. 

northward 
through fog 



and fLting In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 
It perched for vespers nine ; 
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, 
Glimmered the white moonshine. 



The ancient u 
mariner in- 



God save thee, ancient mariner, 
kulejffi From the fiends that plague thee thus ! — 
good^ b me d n . f Why look'st thou so ? " — With my crossbow 
I shot the albatross. 



PART II. 

The sun now rose upon the right : 
Out of the sea came he, 
Still hid in mist, and on the left 
Went down into the sea. 

And the good south wind still blew behind, 
But no sweet bird did follow, 
. Nor any day, for food or play, 
Came to the mariner's hollo. 

Hiaship- And I had done a hellish thing, 
o.u against And it would work 'em woe ; 

the ancient 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



147 



For all averred, I had killed the bird 
That made the breeze to blow : 
Ah, wretch ! said they, the bird to slay- 
That made the breeze to blow ! 



manner for 
killing the 
bird of good 
luck. 



Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, 

The glorious sun uprist ; 

Then all averred, 1 had killed the bird 

That brought the fog and mist : 

'T was right, said they, such birds to slay, 

That bring the fog and mist. 

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 

The furrow followed free ; 

We were the first that ever burst 

Into that silent sea. 

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 
'T was sad as sad could be ; . 
And we did speak only to break 
The silence of the sea ! 



But when 
the fog 
cleared off, 
they justify 
the same, 
and thus 
make them- 
selves ac- 
complices 
in the 
crime. 



The fair 
breeze con- 
tinues ,* the 
ship enters 
the Pacific 
Ocean, and 
sails north- 
ward even 
till it reach- 
es the line. 

The ship 
hath been 
suddenly 
becalmed. 



All in a hot and copper sky, 
The bloody sun at noon 
Right up above the mast did stand, 
No bigger than the moon. 



Day after day, day after day, 
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 
As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean. 

Water, water, everywhere, 
And all the boards did shrink ; 
Water, water, everywhere, 
Nor any drop to drink. 



And the al- 
batross be- 
gins to be 
avenged. 



148 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



The very deep did rot : Christ ! 
That ever this should be ! 
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 
Upon the slimy sea. 

About, about, in reel and rout, 
The death-fires danced at night ; 
The water, like a witch's oils, 
Burnt green, and blue, and white. 

a spirit had And some in dreams assured were 
themToneof Of the spirit that plagued us so ; 
inhabitant/ Nine fathom deep he had followed us 
et^neh^e?" From the land of mist and snow. 

departed 
souls nor 

angels: concerning 1 whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, 
Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or ele- 
ment without one or more. 

And every tongue, through utter drought, 
Was withered at the root ; 
We could not speak, no more than if 
We had been choked with soot. 



matetTn" Ah ! well-a-day ! what evil looks 

dist r ei: e Had I from old and young ! 

th°rowthe n Instead of the cross, the albatross 

o^hefn- 11 About my neck was hung. 

cient mari- 
ner ; in sign 
whereof, 
they hang* 

the dead w.*— ,„ 

sea-bird PART III. 

round his 
neck. 

There passed a weary time. Each throat 
Was parched, and glazed each eye. 
A weary time ! a weary time ! 
The an- How glazed each weary eye, 
ine" bJlToM- When, looking westward, I beheld 
the eie'menl A something in the sky. 

afar off. ° J 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



149 



At first it seemed a little speck, 
And then it seemed a mist ; 
It moved, and moved, and took at last 
A certain shape, I wist. 

A speck, a mist, a shape I wist, 
And still it neared and neared : 
As if it dodged a water-sprite, 
It plunged, and tacked, and veered. 

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, 

We could not laugh nor wail ; 

Through utter drought all dumb we stood ; 

I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, 

And cried, A. sail ! a sail ! 

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, 
Agape they heard me call ; 
Gramercy ! they for joy did grin, 
And all at once their breath drew in, 
As they were drinking all. 

See ! see ! I cried, she tacks no more ! 
Hither, to work us weal, 
Without a breeze, without a tide, 
She steadies with upright keel ! 

The western wave was all a-flame, 

The day was wellnigh done ; 

Almost upon the western wave 

Rested the broad bright sun ; 

When that strange shape drove suddenly 

Betwixt us and the sun. 



At it* near- 
er ap- 
proach, it 
6eemeth 
him to be a 
Ehip, and at 
a dearran- 
Bom he 
freeth his 
speech from 
the bonds 
of thirst. 



A flash of 
joy. 



And horror 
follows ; for 
can it be a 
ship that 
comes on- 
ward with- 
out wind or 
tide? 



And straight the sun was flecked with bars, 
(Heaven's mother send us grace !) 



It seemeth 
him but the 
skeleton of 
a ship. 



150 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



As if through a dungeon-grate he peered 
With broad and burning face. 

Alas ! thought I, and my heart beat loud, 
How fast she nears and nears ! 
Are those her sails that glance in the sun 
Like restless gossameres ? 

are mIVm Are those her ribs through which the sun 
SSo? JK Did peer, as through a grate ? 
Sesfeare And is that woman all her crew ? 
he°r m d a e n at a h- d Is that a Death ? and are there two ? 
Tothe^on Is Death that woman's mate ? 

board the 
skeleton 

ship * Her lips were red, her looks were free, 
Hke e crew 8 . e1 ' Her locks were yellow as gold ; 
Her skin was as white as leprosy, 
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, 
Who thicks man's blood with cold. 



Death and The naked hulk alongside came, 

Life-in- , o ' 

Death have And the twain were casting dice ; 

diced for the . it* t 

ship's crew; « j/he game is done ! 1 ve won, 1 ve won 

and she (the » . 

latter) win. Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 

neth the ^ 7 

ancient 

mariner. r _ 1 , . .. - _ 

1 he sun s rim dips ; the stars rush out ; 

No twilight . . , ill 

within the At one stride comes the dark ; 
the sun. With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea 
Off shot the spectre-bark. 

At the rising We listened and looked sideways up ! 

oftbemoon, J r 

Fear at my heart, as at a cup, 

My life-blood seemed to sip ! 

The stars were dim, and thick the night ; 

The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white ; 



t » 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



151 



From the sails the dew did drip ; — 
Till clomb above the eastern bar 
The horned moon, with one bright star 
Within the nether tip. 

One after one, by the star-dogged moon, 
Too quick for groan or sigh, 
Each turned his face, with a ghastly pang, 
And cursed me with his eye. 

Four times fifty living men 
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan), 
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, 
They dropped down one by one. 

The souls did from their bodies fly, — 
They fled to bliss or woe ! 
And every soul it passed me by, 
Like the whizz of my crossbow ! 



One after 
another, 



His ship- 
mates drop 
down dead ; 



But Life-in- 
Death be- 
gins her 
work on the 
ancient 
mariner. 



PART IV. 



" I fear thee, ancient mariner ! 

I fear thy skinny hand ! 

And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 

As is the ribbed sea-sand ! * 



The wed- 
ding-guest 
feareth that 
a spirit is 
talking to 
him : 



" I fear thee and thy glittering eye, 
And thy skinny hand, so brown." — 



* For the last two lines of this stanza, I am indebted 
to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from 
Nether Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in 
the autumn of 1797, that this poem was planned, and in 
part composed. 



152 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



Sen^mnri-" Fear not, fear not, thou wedding-guest ! 
£im a o7h r u h This body dropt not down. 

bodily life, 
and pro- 

"latfhil Alone, alone, all, all alone, 
horrible Alone on a wide, wide sea ! 

penance. . 7 

And never a saint took pity on 
My soul in agony. 

He despis- The many men, so beautiful ! 
creatures of And they all dead did lie ! 

And a thousand thousand slimy things 

Lived on : and so did I. 

And envi- I looked upon the rotting sea, 
the/shouid And drew my eyes away ; 
manyTie 80 I looked upon the rotting deck, 

dead. ^ n( j t h ere t h e J ea( J men J a y # 

I looked to heaven and tried to pray ; 
But or ever a prayer had gusht, 
A wicked whisper came and made 
My heart as dry as dust. 

I closed my lids, and kept them close, 

And the balls like pulses beat ; 

For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky, 

Lay like a load on my weary eye, 

And the dead were at my feet. 

But the The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 

curse hveth __ . .. . . ' 

for him in Nor rot nor reek did they ; 

the dead The look with which they looked on me 

mpn. " 



men. 



Had never passed away. 

An orphan's curse would drag to hell 
A spirit from on high ; 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



153 



But, O, more horrible than that 
Is the curse in a dead man's eye ! 
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, 
And yet I could not die. 



The moving moon went up the sky, 
And nowhere did abide ; 
she was going up, 
And a star or two beside. 



In his lone* 

liness and 
fixedness, 
he yearneth 

ooitly she was going up, towards the 

journeying 
moon, and 
the stars 
that still so- 
journ yet still move onward, and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their ap- 
pointed rest, and their native country, and their own natural homes, which they enter unan- 
nounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival. 



Her beams bemocked the sultry main, 
Like April hoar-frost spread ; 
But where the ship's huge shadow lay, 
The charmed water burnt alway 
A still and awful red. 



Beyond the shadow of the ship, 

I watched the water-snakes ; 

They moved in tracks of shining white, 

And when they reared, the elfish light 

Fell off in hoary flakes. 

Within the shadow of the ship 

I watched their rich attire ; 

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, 

They coiled and swam ; and every track 

Was a flash of golden fire. 

O happy living things ! no tongue 

Their beauty might declare : 

A spring of love gushed from my heart, 

And I blessed them unaware : 

Sure, my kind saint took pity on me, 

And I blessed them unaware. 



By the light 
of the moon 
he behold- 
ethGod'8 
creatures of 
the great 
calm. 



Their beau- 
ty and their 
happiness. 



He blesseth 
them in his 
heart. 



154 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



be^inHo The se ^ same moment I could pray ; 
brlak. A n d from my neck so free 

The albatross fell off, and sank 

Like lead into the sea. 



part v. 

sleep ! it is a gentle thing, 
Beloved from pole to pole ! 

To Mary Queen the praise be given ! 
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven, 
That slid into my soul. 

fh y e Hoiy of The silty buckets on the deck, 
Mother, the That had so long remained, 

ancient © » m 

refreshed 8 * dreamt that they were filled with dew, 
with rain. A n d w hen I woke it rained. 

My lips were wet, my throat was cold, 
My garments all were dank ; 
Sure, I had drunken in my dreams, 
And still my body drank. 

1 moved, and could not feel my limbs, 
I was so light, — almost 

I thought that I had died in sleep, 
And was a blessed ghost. 



He heareth And soon I heard a roaring wind ; 

■ounds and t i* 1 

•eeth It did not come a-near ; 

•ightf Ind But with its sound it shook the sails, 

commotions m, .-,- j 

in the sky 1 hat were so thin and sere. 

and the ele- 
ment. 

The upper air burst into life, 
And a hundred fire-flags sheen ; 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



155 



To and fro they were hurried about, 
And to and fro, and in and out, 
The wan stars danced between. 

And the coming wind did roar more loud, 
And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 
And the rain poured down from one black cloud, 
The moon was at its edge. 

The thick black cloud was cleft, and still 
The moon was at its side ; 
Like waters shot from some high crag, 
The lightning fell with never a jag, 
A river steep and wide. 

The loud wind never reached the ship, The bodies 

* of the ship's 

Yet now the ship moved on ! crewarein- 

Beneath the lightning and the moon the shi'p 

The dead men gave a groan. 

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, 
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes ; 
It had been strange, even in a dream, 
To have seen those dead men rise. 

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on, 

Yet never a breeze upblew ; 

The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, 

Where they were wont to do ; 

They raised their limbs like lifeless tools : 

We were a ghastly crew. 

The body of my brother's son 
Stood by me knee to knee : 
The body and I pulled at one rope, 
But he said naught to me. 



moves on. 



156 THE ANCIENT MARINER. 

" I fear thee, ancient mariner ! " 

Be calm, thou wedding-guest ! 
SeVSui^f 'T was not those souls that fled in pain 
Lorf/de- Which to their corses came again, 
?anh or But a troop of spirits blest. 

middle air, 
but by a 

uoTof an- ^ or wnen lt dawned, they dropped their arms, 

fe e nt C d 8 o P wn ts ^ n ^ c l ustere d round the mast ; 

by the invo- Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, 

cation of the . _ - 1 • i t i 

guardian And from their bodies passed. 

saint. * 

Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 
Then darted to the sun ; 
Slowly the sounds came back again, — 
Now mixed, now one by one. 

Sometimes a-dropping from the sky 
I heard the sky-lark sing ; 
Sometimes all little birds that are, 
How they seemed to fill the sea and air 
With their sweet jargoning ! 

And now 't was like all instruments, 
Now like a lonely flute, 
And now it is an angel's song, 
That makes the heavens be mute. 

It ceased ; yet still the sails made on 

A pleasant noise till noon, 

A noise like of a hidden brook, 

In the leafy month of June, 

That to the sleeping woods all night 

Singeth a quiet tune. 

Till noon we quietly sailed on, 
Yet never a breeze did breathe : 
Slowly and smoothly went the ship, 
Moved onward from beneath. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



157 



Under the keel nine fathom deep, 
From the land of mist and snow, 
The spirit slid ; and it was he 
That made the ship to go. 
The sails at noon left off their tune, 
And the ship stood still also. 

The sun, right up above the mast, 
Had fixed her to the ocean : 
But in a minute she 'gan to stir 
With a short, uneasy motion, — 
Backwards and forwards half her length, 
With a short, uneasy motion. 

Then, like a pawing horse let go, 
She made a sudden bound ; 
It flung the blood into my head, 
And I fell down in a s wound. 

How long in that same fit I lay 
I have not to declare ; 
But ere my living life returned, 
I heard, and in my soul discerned, 
Two voices in the air. 

" Is it he ? " quoth one, " Is this the man ? 
By him who died on cross, 
With his cruel bow he laid full low 
The harmless albatross. 

" The spirit who bideth by himself 
In the land of mist and snow, 
He loved the bird that loved the man 
Who shot him with his bow." 

The other was a softer voice, 

As soft as honey-dew : 

Quoth he, " The man hath penance done, 

And penance more will do." 



The lone- 
some spirit 
from the 
south pole 
carries on 
the ship at 
far as the 
line, in obe- 
dience to 
the angelic 
troop, but 
still requir- 
eth ren- 
geance. 



The polar 
•pint's fel- 
low-demons, 
the invisible 
inhabitants 
of the ele- 
ment, take 
part in his 
wrong 1 , and 
two of them 
relate, one 
to the other, 
that pen- 
ance long 
and heavy 
for the an- 
cient mari- 
iner hath 
been accord- 
ed to the po- 
lar spirit, 
who return- 
eth south- 
ward. 



158 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



PART VI. 



FIRST VOICE. 

But tell me, tell me ! speak again, 
Thy soft response renewing, — 
What makes that ship drive on so fast ? 
What is the ocean doincr ? 



SECOND VOICE. 



Still as a slave before his lord, 
The ocean hath no blast ; 
His great bright eye most silently 
Up to the moon is cast, — 

If he may know which way to go, 
For she guides him smooth or grim. 
See, brother, see ! how graciously 
She looketh down on him ! 

FIRST VOICE. 

But why drives on that ship so fast, 
S e « n tr-n l A n ." Without or wave or wind ? 

to a trance ; 
for the an- 
gelic power 

causeth the SECOND VOICE, 

vessel to 

ward faster" ^he ^ * S CUt aWa Y before, 

than human And closes from behind. 

life could 



The mari- 
ner hath 



Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more high ! 
Or we shall be belated ! 
For slow and slow that ship will go, 
When the mariner's trance is abated. 

The super- J wo ke, and we were sailing on, 

natural mo- 7 o ? 

ta°rded- e the ^ s m a E en " e weather; 

JTwlkes' and ^ was m S nt > ca ^ m m ght> tne moon was high ; 

his penance The dead men stood together. 

begins O 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 159 

All stood together on the deck, 
For a charnel-dungeon fitter ; 
All fixed on me their stony eyes, 
That in the moon did glitter. 

The pang, the curse, with which they died, 
Had never passed away ; 
I could not draw my eyes from theirs, 
Nor turn them up to pray. 

And now this spell was snapt ; once more P e ,, curie '•" 

. r l 7 finallj expi- 

I viewed the ocean green, ated » 

And looked far forth, yet little saw 
Of what had else been seen ; — 

Like one that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread, 

And, having once turned round, walks on, 

And turns no more his head ; 

Because he knows a frightful fiend 

Doth close behind him tread. 

But soon there breathed a wind on me, 
Nor sound nor motion made ; 
Its path was not upon the sea 
In ripple or in shade. 

It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek, 
Like a meadow-gale of spring, — 
It mingled strangely with my fears, 
Yet it felt like a welcoming. 

Swiftly, swiftly, flew the ship, 
Yet she sailed softly too ; 
Sweetly, sweetly, blew the breeze, — 
On me alone it blew. 



160 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



ctSmmari"" O dream of joy ! is this, indeed, 
eth r h b u h nl d : The lighthouse top I see ? 
l£ coun - Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? 
Is this mine own countree ? 

We drifted o'er the harbour-bar, 
And I with sobs did pray, — 
O, let me be awake, my God ! 
Or let me sleep alway. 

The harbour-bay was clear as glass, 
So smoothly it was strewn ; 
And on the bay the moonlight lay, 
And the shadow of the moon. 

The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, 
That stands above the rock ; 
The moonlight steeped in silentness 
The steady weathercock. 

The angeiic And the bay was white with silent light, 

spirits leave __ . . •* . O ' 

bodies'" 1 ^■ 1 "' risln g from the same, 

Full many shapes, that shadows were, 
In crimson colors came. 

And appear A little distance from the prow 

in their own . r 

u-ht s ° f Ariose crimson shadows were ; 

I turned my eyes upon the deck, — 
O Christ ! what saw I there ! 

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, 
And, by the holy rood ! 
A man all light, a seraph- man, 
On every corse there stood. 

This seraph-band each waved his hand ; 
It was a heavenly sight ! 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 161 



They stood as signals to the land, 
Each one a lovely light ; 

This seraph-band each waved his hand, 
No voice did they impart, — 
No voice ; but, O, the silence sank 
Like music on my heart ! 

But soon I heard the dash of oars, 
1 heard the pilot's cheer ; 
My head was turned perforce away, 
And I saw a boat appear. 

The pilot and the pilot's boy, 
I heard them coming fast ; 
Dear Lord in heaven, it was a joy 
The dead men could not blast. 

I saw a third, — I heard his voice ; 

It is the hermit good ! 

He singeth loud his godly hymns 

That he makes in the wood. 

He '11 shrieve my soul, he '11 wash away 

The albatross's blood. 



PART VII. 

This hermit good lives in that wood «Jf\ e he ermit 

Which slopes down to the sea. wood > 

How loudly his sweet voice he rears ! 
He loves to talk with marineres 
That come from a far countree. 

He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve, — 
He hath a cushion plump ; 

11 



162 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



It is the moss that wholly hides 
The rotted old oak-stump. 

The skiff-boat neared : I heard them talk, 
" Why, this is strange, I trow ! 
Where are those lights so many and fair, 
That signal made but now ? " 

Approach- " Strange, by my faith ! " the hermit said, — 

eth the ship . , ° ' J J "> 

with won- " And they answered not our cheer ! 

The planks look warped ! and see those sails, 
How thin they are and sere ! 
I never saw aught like to them, 
Unless perchance it were 

" Brown skeletons of leaves that lag 
My forest-brook along ; 
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, 
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, 
That eats the she- wolf 's young." 

" Dear Lord ! it hath a fiendish look," 
The pilot made reply ; 
" I am a-feared." — " Push on, push on ! " 
Said the hermit cheerily. 

The boat came closer to the ship, 
But I nor spake nor stirred ; 
The boat came close beneath the ship, 
And straight a sound was heard. 

The ship Under the water it rumbled on, 
sinke e th. y Still louder and more dread ; 

It reached the ship, it split the bay ; 

The ship went down like lead. 



The ancient 
mariner is 
saved in the 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 163 

Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, 

Which sky and ocean smote, "iRVklSf 

Like one that hath been seven days drowned, 

My body lay afloat ; 

But, swift as dreams, myself I found 

Within the pilot's boat. 

Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, 
The boat spun round and round ; 
And all was still, save that the hill 
Was telling of the sound. 

I moved my lips, — the pilot shrieked, 
And fell down in a fit ; 
The holy hermit raised his eyes, 
And prayed where he did sit. 

I took the oars : the pilot's boy, 

Who now doth crazy go, 

Laughed loud and long, and all the while 

His eyes went to and fro. 

" Ha ! ha ! " quoth he, " full plain I see, 

The Devil knows how to row." 

And now, all in my own countree, 
I stood on the firm land ; 
The hermit stepped forth from the boat, 
And scarcely he could stand. 



" O, shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man ! " m a e rine? ient 

The hermit crossed his brow. UTrV^Ith 

" Say quick," quoth he, " I bid thee say I^S 1 

What manner of man art thou ? " penance 

of life fall 3 
on him : 

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched 
With a woful agony, 



164 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



Which forced me to begin my tale ; 
And then it left me free. 



udanon, Since then, at an uncertain hour, 
uhSSS? * That a g° n y returns : 
ny e co a n n - a ' ' And till my ghastly tale is told, 
•trainetb This heart within me burns. 

him to trav- 
el from land 
to land, 

I pass like night from land to land ; 
I have strange power of speech ; 
That moment that his face I see, 
I know the man that must hear me : 
To him my tale I teach. 

What loud uproar bursts from that door ! 
The wedding-guests are there : 
But in the garden bower the bride 
And bridemaids singing are : 
And hark the little vesper bell 
Which biddeth me to prayer ! 

O wedding-guest ! this soul hath been 
Alone on a wide, wide sea ; 
So lonely 't was, that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be. 

O, sweeter than the marriage-feast, 
'T is sweeter far to me 
To walk together to the kirk 
With a goodly company ! — 

To walk together to the kirk, — 
And all together pray, 
While each to his great Father bends, 
Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 
And youths and maidens gay ! 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 165 

Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell fe«h°byhu 

To thee, thou wed ding- guest ! J]£ f x v a e m ' 
He prayeth well who loveth well 



and rever- 
ence to all 

Both man, and bird, and beast. GoSmadf 

and loveth. 

He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all. 

The mariner, whose eye is bright, 
Whose beard with age is hoar, 
Is gone : and now the wedding-guest 
Turned from the bridegroom's door. 

He went like one that hath been stunned 
And is of sense forlorn : 
A sadder and a wiser man 
He rose the morrow morn. 



MIR ABE AU. — Sterling. 

Not oft has peopled Earth sent up 

So deep and wide a groan before, 
As when the word astounded France, — 

" The life of Mirabeau is o'er ! " 
From its one heart a nation wailed ; 

For well the startled sense divined 
A greater power had fled away 

Than aught that now remained behind. 

The scathed and haggard face of will, 

And look so strong with weaponed thought, 

Had been to many million hearts 

The All between themselves and naught ; 



166 MIRABEAU. 

And so they stood aghast and pale, 

As if to see the azure sky 
Come shattering down, and show beyond 

The black and bare Infinity. 

For he, while all men trembling peered 

Upon the Future's empty space, 
Had strength to bid above the void 

The oracle unveil its face ; 
And when his voice could rule no more, 

A thicker weight of darkness fell, 
And tombed in its sepulchral vault 

The wearied master of the spell. 

A myriad hands like shadows weak, 

Or stiff and sharp as bestial claws, 
Had sought to steer the fluctuant mass 

That bore his country's life and laws ; 
The rudder felt his giant hand, 

And quailed beneath the living grasp 
That now must drop the helm of Fate, 

Nor pleasure's cup can madly clasp. 

France did not reck how fierce a storm 

Of rending passion, blind and grim, 
Had ceased its audible uproar 

When death sank heavily on him ; 
Nor heeded they the countless days 

Of toiling smoke and blasting flame, 
That now by this one final hour 

Were summed for him as guilt and shame. 

The wondrous life that flowed so long, 
A stream of all commixtures vile, 

Had seemed for them in morning light 
With gold and crystal waves to smile. 



MIR A BEAU. 



167 



It rolled with mighty breadth and sound 
A new creation through the land, 

Then sudden vanished into earth, 
And left a barren waste of sand. 

To them at first the world appeared 

Aground, and lying shipwrecked there, 
And freedom's folded flag no more 

With dazzling sun-burst filled the air ; 
But 't is in after years for men 

A sadder and a greater thing, 
To muse upon the inward heart 

Of him who lived the People's King. 

O wasted strength ! O light and calm 

And better hopes so vainly given ! 
Like rain upon the herbless sea 

Poured down by too benignant Heaven. 
We see not stars unfixed by winds, 

Or lost in aimless thunder-peals ; 
But man's large soul, the star supreme, 

In guideless whirl how oft it reels ! 

The mountain hears the torrent dash, 

But rocks will not in billows run ; 
No eagle's talons rend away 

Those eyes that joyous drink the sun : 
Yet man, by choice and purpose weak, 

Upon his own devoted head 
Calls down the flash, as if its fires 

A crown of peaceful glory shed. 

Alas ! — Yet wherefore mourn ? The law 
Is holier than a sage's prayer ; 

The godlike power bestowed on men 
Demands of them a godlike care ; 



168 



MIRABEAU. 

And noblest gifts, if basely used, 
Will sternliest avenge the wrong, 

And grind with slavish pangs the slave 
Whom once they made divinely strong. 

The lamp, that, 'mid the sacred cell, 

On heavenly forms its glory sheds, 
Untended dies, and in the gloom 

A poisonous vapor glimmering spreads. 
It shines and flares, and reeling ghosts 

Enormous through the twilight swell, 
Till o'er the withered world and heart 

Rings loud and slow the dooming knell. 

No more I hear a nation's shout 

Around the hero's tread prevailing, 
No more I hear above his tomb 

A nation's fierce, bewildered wailing ; 
I stand amid the silent night, 

And think of man and all his woe 
With fear and pity, grief and awe, 

When I remember Mirabeau. 



